All in the Family / We're ALL in the Family

As a worship leader, we rarely stop to think of how our career choices might affect our children. We tend to assume that if we are serving the local church, doing the work of the Lord, we will be blessed to have children who likewise Choose God-honoring career paths, regardless of whether they work in the local church. 

But sometimes, it doesn't work that way. So many worship pastors experience the heartache and abuse that has become indicative of the American church through the years, and their children turn their back on ministry, and some even turn their back on God.

That is why I find myself writing this post, today. I often find myself thinking back through twenty plus years of ministry, clocking twice the hours the average American worker invests, earning half the pay such hours would normally bring. While pious church members guilt-trip pastors for thinking about such things, I learned to cope by accepting responsibility for the decision to accept the job offers and placing my wife and children in harm's way ... knowing that one embittered soul was all it would take to land a potentially fatal blow to my family's faith. 

Not everything is bad about serving in ministry, but rarely do you experience such life-changing ministry investment from the people of God that it completely wipes out the pain and mistrust created by thoughtless, selfish Christians. Many of the good things that occurred turned out to be the reason we were able to recover, or "bounce back" as pastors often call it, so quickly. But it is not the goal of the Church of Jesus Christ to create such landmark ministry and service events that one could justify hurtful behavior on the assumption that the good times would ultimately make us all forget.

To the contrary, the hurt that my wife and I experienced in not one, not two, not even three, but several churches, could easily have tainted the hearts of our children against the idea of serving in the local church for the remainder of their lives. To our surprise, both of our young adults have chosen a commitment to ministry and to the sacrifice and vulnerability that will make them susceptible to the same fate we encountered. And, yet, they are resolved and undeterred.

What's more, they are completely aware of the vulnerability it creates and the way in which children of God can abuse it for their own gain. It's amazing how much your young children can recall the deceitful behavior of wayward church-folk; and, it's even more amazing how they remember, with even greater clarity, the resilience of their parents and the example we set to never let the broken followers of Jesus lead the church downward into a broken state of disrepair.

So, I post these photos of my wife and son, leading worship together, as a reminder that God can use the next generation,... And that maybe, just maybe THAT generation can learn to treat people the way Christ wanted his Church to treat one another.

May the God of creation grant us grace, and may we learn to value that grace so deeply that no rights, privileges, or ideologies would ever endanger the work of Jesus Christ by baiting our presumptive, sinful tendencies. I see a better future, and it starts here.

-Jeff Fessler