Reflections on Ministry and Family

I laid on my bed and stared at the pine ceiling. I was in northern Arkansas, a four hour drive from the nearest airport, it was 2AM, and I had a speaking engagement in six hours. But I couldn’t sleep. My wife Rachelle had taken Rafi to the hospital with intense stomach pain, and I was riddled with anxiety being half a continent away. I had left Rachelle and our three young kids back in San Francisco for my annual two week Passover speaking tour, and just a couple days into my tour my middle son Rafi seemed to be having an appendix attack. If Rafi needed surgery, I could drive through the night back to Little Rock to catch the next flight to San Francisco. There was no way I’d make it back in time, but how could I continue my speaking tour as if everything was ok? I didn’t know what I was supposed to do.

As I waited for Rachelle to call back with an update from the doctor I prayed for Rafi, for Rachelle, and for clarity to make the right decision. I was an ordained minister: a missionary with a calling and a deep sense of purpose. The speaking engagements on my schedule represented countless hours of work to set up and a big financial investment to raise awareness and funds for my ministry. This wasn’t my first first time away from Rachelle and the kids for the sake of my work. I was regularly on the road for conferences, speaking tours, branch visits, and evangelism outreaches. Some trips were just for a weekend, but others were longer. When Rina was 6 weeks old I went to India for a month. It never felt right for me to be away for so long, but it was part of the job and I always believed it was for a good cause. But this was different. Rafi was in the hospital and I was wrestling to justify why I was away from my family and whether I should just get off the bed and start driving toward the airport.

I felt the conflict between my obligations, and for the first time, I had to grapple with my responsibility as a minister and my responsibility as a father and decide which one came first. On the one hand, I believed that my work as an evangelist and preacher was a sacred duty, and my calling had sustained me through the most difficult seasons. On the other hand, I believed I had an equally sacred duty as a father and husband. How could I choose?

Over my years in ministry I’d met many senior ministers who demonstrated and waxed eloquent about the eternal value of God’s Kingdom work. Those who pointed to the Great Commission as the rallying cry for our lives: to preach the Gospel and make disciples of all nations. There is no higher calling! I believed the message then, and I still believe it today. But I’d also met many children of ministers who resented God and the church because they saw their fathers choose Kingdom work over fatherhood. It’s a bitter irony: men who are held up as model leaders and spiritual fathers in the church who neglect their physical children and wives to the detriment of their families.

What kind of father and husband would I be if I left my wife to deal with my son in the hospital while I soldiered on talking about evangelism and the Jewish Roots of the faith in Arkansas? I wrestled with this question weighing the passages that leant credence to the sacrifice. Abraham offered Isaac up on the altar and God blessed him for it — Genesis 22. Jesus told his disciples that no one who’d left children for the sake of the Gospel would fail to receive a hundredfold — Mark 10:29–30. Beyond scripture I could look to many examples of Christian leaders who sacrificed much more: William Carey in India, Hudson Taylor of the China Inland Mission and so many others who put their families on the altar for the sake of the Gospel.

But my mind kept going back to a passage I’d been studying for one of my sermons. In Mark 7 and Matthew 15 the Pharisees and scribes came to Jesus to confront Him about the fact that his disciples weren’t keeping some of the Jewish traditions around ceremonial washing. But Jesus points out their hypocrisy by demonstrating how another contemporary Jewish tradition violated the spirit of God’s Law.

And he said to them, “You have a fine way of rejecting the commandment of God in order to establish your tradition! For Moses said, ‘Honor your father and your mother’; and, ‘Whoever reviles father or mother must surely die.’ But you say, ‘If a man tells his father or his mother, “Whatever you would have gained from me is Corban”’ (that is, given to God) — then you no longer permit him to do anything for his father or mother, thus making void the word of God by your tradition that you have handed down. And many such things you do.” (Mark 7:9–13 ESV)

The spirit of the passage isn’t difficult to understand or contextualize. There is a social and moral obligation for children to care for their parents. Therefore if someone who ought to be helping financially support his parents instead decides to give that money as a tithe to the congregation or church, then that person is actually breaking God’s Law by neglecting their responsibility to their parents. The giver is giving away something that isn’t theirs to give. In effect: they are stealing from their parents, and offering these stolen goods as an unholy sacrifice to God. Furthermore, the leaders of the congregation or church are encouraging that person to break God’s command if they accept or demand such an offering.

As I stared at the pine ceiling a question hit me like a ton of bricks. Had I been giving away something that wasn’t mine to give? Had I been offering up something as an unholy sacrifice to God that I actually owed to my children? Scripture is clear about how God fearing people ought to shepherd their children. As a Jewish believer in Jesus I immediately thought of God’s words to my people in Deuteronomy 6, the words of the Sh’ma and V’ahavta:

“Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one. You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates. (Deuteronomy 6:4–9 ESV)

I got up from the bed and began to pace the room. When we started in ministry it was just me and my wife. We walked away from our careers to full time ministry after losing our first child as a late stillborn pregnancy, and since then we’d devoted ourselves to disciple making. We led discipleship trips, we had a caseload of young adults we mentored, we did evangelism on campuses and beyond, we’d even run a communal discipleship house for a few years where young believers were mentored over meals, chores, and community events. Eventually we started having kids and things shifted, but only by degree. Our lives had stayed focussed on ministry with just enough margin to accommodate the kids because we felt sure that ministry was our calling.

But it’s hard to make disciples. You invest your life and heart into other people but ultimately they have to want Jesus for themselves and they have the freedom to walk away. As I paced I started listing the people who’s lives we’d helped shape over the years. Some names filled me with joy, others with sadness. I thought of those who walked away from their faith after years of discipleship. I remembered the heartbreak of seeing people you love choose a self destructive path. The work had definitely taken a toll on me. I knew that over the past several years I’d become more and more emotionally unavailable to my family after long days of dealing with other people’s spiritual problems, and I’d been prone to angry outbursts for a few days before and after each work trip, especially when I spent whole weekends away or longer. And in that moment as I paced the room it dawned on me that I’d been giving my best to the ministry while throwing my emotional and spiritual scraps to my wife and kids.

It’s hard to describe what happened next, but in an epiphany I realized I’d been ordering my life all wrong, that I’d been neglecting the greatest calling on my life: to make disciples of my own children. All of a sudden my priorities became very clear. I needed to give my best to my wife and kids, not the scraps of my life. If Rafi needed surgery I’d fly home immediately.

I knew there would be consequences if I left my speaking tour early, but the consequences didn’t matter to me anymore. Rachelle and the kids would come first because I owed it to them to be physically and emotionally present especially while the kids were still young, day by day teaching them, praying for them, being there for them, helping to shape them into women and men who love Jesus. I wouldn’t sacrifice the time and energy that rightfully belonged to my family on the altar of ministry any longer. Those things weren’t mine to sacrifice and they never had been.

In the room I confessed and prayed. I asked God to forgive me for offering an unholy sacrifice of time and energy that rightfully belonged to my family. I asked for wisdom to know how to reprioritize my life. I asked for courage to follow through with the changes I needed to make. I asked God to make me a light to my children, and that they would follow Jesus all the days of their lives. As I prayed my phone rang. Rachelle was headed home from the hospital with Rafi. It was just a stomach bug and he wouldn’t need surgery after all. I breathed a sigh of relief that Rafi wouldn’t need surgery and that I wouldn’t need to immediately fly home. I would see my tour through to completion, but that tour would be my last. I promised myself I wouldn’t do another long trip at the expense of my family.

Before going to bed that night I caught a vision for the future. It was inspired by a family I’d stayed with in another part of Arkansas a few nights before. After speaking at the church that night I’d gone to my host’s home and joined their family supper. Around the table sat three generations of God fearing people who were active in their churches and communities. The whole family was there. All the children and grandchildren were solid believers in Jesus. My hosts were old and in poor health yet they had hope for the future. As I thought about their family I wrote down my vision for my family:

“I imagine the day when I’m old and my grandchildren are grown. I look back at my life with joy and contentment as my wife Rachelle and I live a simple life, having raised our children to follow the Lord and add value to this world, seeing them raise their children to follow the Lord and add value to the world. They’ve chosen good spouses, they’ve found work they’re good at and worked hard at it, they’ve been faithful members of their churches or congregations with strong Jewish identities: proud of their faith, loving our Lord, living an abundant life.

Rachelle and I would die in our beds knowing that the Gospel has been central to our lives, that we’ve lived it and been faithful witnesses of it, knowing we’ve established a living legacy within our children and grandchildren who would also be called Pillars in the Kingdom of God. Even world-changers. We would die happy. This is what I want. To be buried by my grandchildren, and for my children to be buried by my great-grandchildren.”

I committed that vision to the Lord, and knew when I got home I would begin to align my life with that vision no matter what I needed to change. Over the next ten day I finished up my speaking tour and flew home as scheduled. Once I got home I started looking at my calendar and prayerfully cancelling the longer trips that were already planned. I cancelled a week long trip to New York. My decision to cancel disappointed a few people, but it wasn’t a big deal. I tried to cancel a two week trip to Jakarta scheduled for later that summer. The Jakarta trip was a big deal, I had been invited as a delegate to the Lausanne Consultation on World Evangelism Young Leaders Summit, but I felt strongly I wasn’t supposed to go. When I told my boss I wanted to cancel the trip I was told I absolutely had to go: it was 100% mandatory. I started to worry. What if my ministry and the vision for my family were actually incompatible?

Cutting back on travel wasn’t the only thing that changed over the next couple months. As I prayed how to align my life with the vision of raising my kids to follow Jesus, and with the commitment to stop giving them the scraps of my emotional energy, I began making clear boundaries with my day to day ministry work. I’d leave the office on time and put my computer away for the day — leaving new incoming emails for the next day in the office. I built decompression time into my work schedule so I could leave the stress of work at the office. When work obligations conflicted with family obligations I started putting my family obligations first.

These changes were necessary for me to stay true to my commitment, but they were hard and came at a cost. I pushed forward into change, but the ministry obligations pushed back. Ultimately, after a few months of trying to sort through these changes, I realized the answer to the question: My ministry obligations and vision for my family WERE incompatible in this season of life, and I needed to leave the ministry. Putting family first in this season meant being around for my kids on their schedules, it meant making enough money I wouldn’t need to fundraise on weekends, it meant forgoing the ministry events that competed for my emotional energy.

Leaving was complicated and very hard. Ministry had steered our lives for the past decade. And leaving ministry wouldn’t guarantee that family came first, we’d have to carefully weigh each decision against our values. Rachelle and I spent many hours in prayers about what we would do once I left. Should we stay in San Francisco and invest into our church community, or move closer to family? Should I pursue work as a leader in another ministry or non-profit, or move in a different direction altogether?

I gave my notice. I would fulfill my ministry obligations, including the trip to Jakarta, but I would be leaving ministry after my 3 month notice period was up. And then, just a few weeks later, three days before I was supposed to fly to Jakarta the unthinkable happened: Rachelle had a stroke. Not a little stroke. A full on stroke the size of a large grape. It was the most stressful and terrifying thing that’s happened in my life, but God used it to crystalize my priorities. I wouldn’t be going to Jakarta after all, and in those moments as we dealt with the unfolding situation I knew with crystal clarity that I couldn’t let external circumstances, even ministry obligations, dictate how I would live my life. I should have trusted my gut when I attempted to cancel my trip to Jakarta after hearing from the Lord in Arkansas, but instead I allowed my convictions to be overruled by ministry obligations. But that was in the past. Now I knew with all certainty I was called to make my family the highest priority in my life, and I dropped everything to be fully present in the situation. Rachelle needed me to care for her. The kids needed me to translate what was happening into something they could understand. I prepared for whatever the new normal would look like with no guarantees that recovery was possible.

Miraculously Rachelle pulled through and returned to normal after just 6 weeks. This was a huge relief and we were incredibly grateful to God for his protection and healing hand. The incident underscored the decision we’d already made to leave ministry in this season. While Rachelle was still recovering we prayed about how to leave the ministry. We couldn’t take “staying in San Francisco after leaving ministry” for granted because life in the city is incredibly expensive, and I had no guarantee I’d be able to find work. We decided I shouldn’t seek another leadership position in another ministry or non-profit at this time because the kids needed me around and I needed a predictable schedule. The best option seemed to be for me to pursue Software Engineering and try to pick up where I’d left off in my career ten years earlier. After several months of unsuccessful interviewing we decided I should go back to school for a 3 month software engineering intensive program to update my skills. This would be a sacrifice and a big leap of faith for the whole family, but if it worked it would ensure we could stay in the city and continue to raise the kids in our church community.

Over the course of the program I’d see the kids in the morning, we’d have breakfast and do devotions together as a family, I’d ride with Rachelle and the kids for school drop-off and walk my oldest daughter Rina to her classroom, then I’d take the train downtown where I’d stay for the rest of the day and into the night. The program ran 6 days a week. Breakfasts and Sundays were my time with family. Other people in the program either studied non-stop seven days a week or caught up on sleep, but I owed that time to Rachelle and the kids.

I started interviewing before the program even ended. I’d decided I wanted to work in the city of San Francisco rather than the wider Silicon Valley because I wanted to maximize my time at home and minimize my commute. In the end, after many MANY hours hustling, I was offered a job as a Software Engineer in San Francisco at Amazon. We had trusted God and He hadn’t let us down! I wouldn’t be working evenings or weekends, I wouldn’t be perpetually raising support, I wouldn’t be expected to travel for long durations, we wouldn’t have to leave San Francisco, and as a bonus, my work would require zero emotional energy.

Working at Amazon has been an amazing gift. From the beginning, I made significantly more money. I get to do work that’s easy for me and that I enjoy a lot. Writing code and designing software systems feels like a sabbatical even on the most stressful days. More significantly, I get to be there for the kids day by day: making breakfast, helping with school drop-off, eating dinner as a family, telling stories and answering questions at bedtime, and all the things we get to do over entire weekends together! We go to church together, we pray for God to meet our needs together, and so much more.

A few nights ago during bedtime Rocco asked, “How did the earth get here?” “God made the earth,” I told him. He paused then said, “That’s impossible, the earth is too big for one person to make.” I smiled, “God’s more powerful than any person, and He’s the one who created everything! The earth, and the moon, and the sun, and the stars. He made the trees and the animals too. Everything that is. God is very powerful, in fact, there’s nothing and no-one more powerful than God.” Rocco looked at me and said, “Oh…. Ok. Goodnight Papa.” Then he turned over and went to sleep.

I’m thankful to be around to answer these simple questions from my kids. Each answer is a like a brick in the construction of their worldview and faith, and I don’t want to leave those things up to chance. I wouldn’t trade those questions for anything.

Since leaving the ministry and joining Amazon there have been many things that have tested my resolve to make decisions in line with our vision. Job offers for better pay but with much longer commutes. Speaking opportunities at engineering conferences that would advance my career but require long times away from home. Side hustle opportunities to join promising and well funded startups that would take up all the margin in my life. Even local ministry opportunities. Every time an opportunity comes up I prayerfully weigh it against our vision for our family, considering whether it takes us closer or farther from the goal.

Some opportunities have hurt to pass up, but I wholeheartedly believe I’m doing the right thing. On the one year anniversary of leaving ministry I did a ten day fast: praying for the kids, praying for wisdom, praying that God would direct our path. In 2007 we left our careers because we felt God calling us to full time ministry. In 2016 we left full time ministry because we felt God calling us to make intentionally raising and discipling our kids the highest priority in our lives. These days we’ve added some ministry back in: Rachelle is the Associate Teaching Director of the San Francisco chapter of Community Bible Study, and I serve on the board of Sunset Youth Services, but both those decisions were made prayerfully and deliberately.

We’ve lived in San Francisco for over ten years, and it’s been a sacrifice for sure. Even on an Amazon salary we can’t afford to buy a home in the neighborhood our life (schools, friends, community) is in. We rent a two bedroom house that barely fits a family of six, but so far the sacrifice has been worth it. We’ll stay here as long as it takes us closer to our goal of raising faithful followers of Jesus. We stay because of community: our kids are growing up with friends they’ve known their whole lives from church. We stay because we believe the tight quarters actually helps us keep track of the kids’ evolving interests and issues. When one of the kids says “Oh Shit!” we hear it from anywhere in the house and can address it immediately. When the kids fight we stop what we’re doing to address the issue because the house is too small for us to ignore it.

We know that raising our kids to follow Jesus is just another form of disciple making. We’re investing our lives and hearts into our four kids but ultimately we know they have to want Jesus for themselves and our investment doesn’t come with any guarantees… They each have a choice and the freedom to walk away. And so, we do the only things we can: we teach them with words, by our example, and we pray that God will keep them close to Him. We know that life comes in seasons, and this is a season of putting our kids first.