Speaker 1: 0:02

Welcome to the Church Renewal Podcast from Flourish Coaching. I'm Jeremy, I'm Matt. This is the third and final installment of the Humanity Deep Dive. We have already looked at the personal impact to the transitional pastor and his wife. Today we're going to consider the family and kids of the pastor. There are some unique experiences and stressors that our kids face as they make their transition into full adulthood. In many ways, having a father who is a transitional pastor is similar to having a military father who's on deployment. We care about our pastors and families and we want to make sure that they are all well cared for. The first two parts of this mini-series are linked in the episode description below. If you haven't listened to them yet, you should Welcome back.

Speaker 1: 0:50

You are listening to the Church Renewal Podcast with Director of Flourish Coaching, matthew Bolling. I am Jeremy Seferati. Matt, how are you doing? I'm doing all right. How are you doing? I'm great, I'm great. We're going to finish our mini-series on Owe the Humanity, part 3, by talking about the transitional pastor and his relationship with the kids. Now I know, because we've already talked about this, that most of your transitional pastors are not in the stage of life where they're raising young kids, or even young adult kids, but it is nevertheless still a factor. You were on assignment and your youngest child is not yet an adult. Would you talk to me about the cost of a person becoming a transitional pastor from the kid's point of view? What's the impact? What's the consideration that you need to take before you take the step?

Speaker 2: 1:41

Yeah. So let me answer this in two ways. So for the there are certainly I actually, when I was doing my transitional pastor, I had one kid who was a senior in high school and one that was in middle school and two grown. And I think there's a guy that I think will eventually work with us, whose kids he'll still have a kid in high school when he comes and works with us. And I've got a guy that's working for me right now who actually has an adult child, who is back living with he and his wife as he tries to get stabilized with a job and a home and things like that. And so there are a measure of transitional pastors that are going to still have significant what I would say is significant, appropriate obligations to their kids. And I think for that it's, I think that for my wife and I, the way that we navigated it, which is what I can share, and I think that this fits the other gentleman that I know who works with us who's still got a kid at home you have to leave space.

Speaker 2: 2:40

When I would come home after being on the road, we would leave space. I would do special things with my daughter, I would check in with my son. I always hug my sons Whenever I go home. I always make a point of as soon as I see them, as soon as I get home, I hug them, I ask them how they're doing. I want them to know that I'm there, drop them occasional text and I think that you just have to remember that the hierarchy of callings. When I'm coaching a pastor, I talk about. You know the goal of our coaching experience. The goal of our coaching together is that at the end of all of this, you still love the Lord, you're still married and your wife wants to be married to you and that your kids still talk to you and that we'll do a little ministry on the side, and that hierarchy of callings is how I perceive.

Speaker 2: 3:29

The scriptures teach us what actually is the hierarchy of our callings and the order of their importance. And so, even as a transitional pastor, I think that your kids, whether they still be at home and you're making space for them when you are at home, if you're a geographic bachelor or whatever, are really critically important, because they're still your progeny and they're still yours, even your adult kids. You need to have space in your life for them, right? You need to make sure that you've got time and space for them. The joke that my wife and I say to each other about our adult kids is that adult kids are willing to take your coaching when they ask for it, and that's very difficult if you're still in the mode of small kids where you can just tell them what to do, right, adult kids don't respond terribly well to that. You may have noticed, listener. And so are you available when your adult kids reach out and they desire coaching, and do you leave space for that and prioritize that? That's really pretty critical as it relates to kids.

Speaker 1: 4:36

How does the burden that the temporary pastor is carrying impact his ability to cultivate and work for the relationship with his kids, whether they are young kids or adults?

Speaker 2: 4:49

Yeah, I think that it takes a lot of. A very influential book in my life is Richard Swenson's Margin. I think that because the work of transitional pastoring can be very overwhelming, you have to choose to be very selective so that you've left margin. You left margin for yourself, you've left margin for rest and you've left margin for your wife and your kids. And so I think that means that for us kind of frenetic types like me, where you always want to get more done and you always want to accomplish more and see more things happen, that your goals maybe need to be lower so that while you're honoring the Lord over here at the church where you're a transitional pastor, you're not dishonoring him over here. That relates to your own household, and that you keep that hierarchy of callings in order.

Speaker 1: 5:39

So what have you, as a father, done to continue working for the flourishing not just of your coaching, but of your kids?

Speaker 2: 5:46

yeah, so I definitely work with that. I'll mention my wife first, but if I am in town which I am, more, at least this year than I was the previous two years we have a dedicated date night. We go out every week. I make enough money that we can do that, and so we go out and we have a date every single week. We go, we go eat something and we go listen to music. We have long conversation that you can't have in the midst of transactional conversation. I think that with my kids my daughter being the one who's underage we spend time with her. We go fishing with her, we'll watch a show together, I'll talk with her, I'll be her chauffeur sometimes to gymnastics, and so you get more conversation in the car than just what her mom has to gymnastics, and so you get more conversation in the car than just what her mom has With my boys. I'm now in the phase where I'm into coaching them as they desire it, and so my main role is, if they reach out, I reach back, and in a timely way.

Speaker 1: 6:36

Okay.

Speaker 2: 6:37

And so that's conversation, that's meeting. My middle son was considering he and a friend have a small business. They were considering expanding it significantly this summer, and so we spent a lot of time together last winter kind of working through what would it look like to turn this from just the two of you into something that would be much bigger than that right? So I made myself available to him and I think that's the best thing that you can do for your adult kids is not intrude in their life, not over-function for them, but be available to them and consider that that's as important as that one more meeting or that one more task that you wanted to get done for the church, that instead that call with your kid, that FaceTime with your grandkids, that was at least as important as that thing that you didn't end up doing for the church.

Speaker 1: 7:22

It seems like a crossover skill between working with your adult kids at home and working with the pastoral search committee.

Speaker 2: 7:30

How's that?

Speaker 1: 7:32

be there when they call Yep, be prepared to give coaching advice and then stand back and let them run.

Speaker 2: 7:38

Yeah, I think being available to me that's the right posture because it says I definitely don't love you if I'm not available to you. And you're asking for help Right, and it's legit. And you're not, like you know, messing up the world and you're reaching out and you're asking me to over function. Because you're reaching out and you're asking me to over-function because you're under-functioning and we don't do that. My wife and I don't do that. But if you reach out for help, but it's legit I have a son who's getting ready to get married. There's a lot of conversations to have happen, being available, even going over there. We've gone over, he lives in Seattle and we live in Coeur d'Alene and so we'll fly over and do something if we need to. I think that being being available is a calling of the parent of adult kids, because when they do want your coaching, don't you want to take that opportunity and not put it off?

Speaker 1: 8:21

I do, and so I try and make myself available the best that I can what feedback have your kids given you about either the cost of your work with flourish, your work as a tp or, in general, the impact of your shepherding in the home for them?

Speaker 2: 8:40

That's a good question. Um, I definitely get the feedback. We miss having you around when you're not there, because even now my work has me. When I was a transitional pastor, I was in the road about 70% of the time, which was fairly brutal. Yeah, now I'm back to a regular year and in and I'm going to run about 40% of the time, which is much more reasonable. Sounds very manageable and doable.

Speaker 1: 9:03

It's much more manageable.

Speaker 2: 9:05

So if there's 20 business days in a month, I might be gone eight of them, and so that's not hard. So I think the consistent feedback I get from my kids is I missed you, we're glad you're back, we'll hug you. When are we going to do something together? Yeah, and that feels good and right. I'm available if they want me, even when I'm on the road, by text or phone call or FaceTime. If there's something that is more critical, more timely, that we need to work on, then we'll do that. But they want to spend time with me and I want to reciprocate that and say I want to spend time with you.

Speaker 1: 9:35

Let's get something on the calendar go to the roller skating rink or the arcade that's actually my daughter is, if you can believe it, back to roller skating.

Speaker 2: 9:43

How crazy is that one of the things she does with her buddies is they meet at the rink. It's bizarre. My wife and I kind of look at each other and go. What was the song that was popular when you were in the roller skating rink, when?

Speaker 1: 9:53

you were going up, who were you trying to steal a kiss from? I'll never tell. That's right, never happened. Kids Don't believe a word. I said it never happened.

Speaker 2: 10:04

Yeah, so being available, I think, to my kids is the main thing that I try and do.

Speaker 1: 10:09

Putting on your executive director hat? What does Flourish do to help guard the family relationships for their transitional pastors?

Speaker 2: 10:18

So I think that that's part of the. Well, let's see. Let me say I think it's two parts. So one, in the early interviewing vetting process, one of the things that I ask about is guys' families, because I want to hear you know, is there a kid who's really sick? And they feel a lot of strain about how to go be with a sick child. Or, more frequently, I would say, what we hear is yeah, we've got an aged parent. We'd love for our next assignment to be in this geography because we'd like to be available to, you know, to this parent right whose health is failing. We're most of us are more on that edge of the spectrum, but I think that I'm trying to learn ahead of time.

Speaker 2: 11:05

Is there a healthy relationship with this transitional pastor and his kids? Because that's actually a warning sign for me. Certainly for sure. Rebel, yeah, certainly kids can rebel and kids can choose to not follow the lord, despite how you raise them. But your attitudes towards even your uh, if they are unbelieving, even your unbelieving kids, tells me a lot about a person. If that's not a concern to me, i'm'm dismissive then that concerns me. I probably won't hire that person. I was disturbed.

Speaker 2: 11:46

I had an experience with a church that had been a client, where an elder in this particular church had a child that had come out as same-sex attracted and was actually in a relationship with a same-sex person, which is not according to the doctrine. I don't know who you are as you're listening to this, but that's not in accordance with the doctrine, at least to the church that I'm ordained in and that this church was. This guy's an elder in this church. This was very painful, sure, and really, really difficult. And as I interacted with this elder and this has happened numerous times now where I've got an interaction with an elder who's got a child who seems extracted, and it was obvious that this elder, the way that he and his wife had sort of worked through this, is they spend very little time with this child.

Speaker 2: 12:27

Okay, and while I can understand that, it also always concerns me who needs you to be closer to them? Right, who needs you to be with them? Sure, it might be difficult, it might be ambiguous, it might be hard I'm not saying it's not any of those things but, boy, if I had a child who was same-sex attracted and they'd grown up in this conservative Christian family and they were not professing faith right now, what do I do with an unbeliever who's my neighbor. Well, I love them, I draw close to them, and so I always want to draw close to my kids. I draw close to them, and so I always want to draw close to my kids, no matter where they are in terms of their profession of faith. I want to draw close to them.

Speaker 1: 13:02

This goes back to something you talked about when we were discussing the power dynamics. When we talk about the authority that has been granted by God, there are spheres of authority and the primary authority, the primary calling that you and I have as men is to be faithful and loving husbands. Yep, I'm sorry, take it back. Primary calling is to be faithful disciples.

Speaker 2: 13:25

Yes, Secondary, faithful and loving husbands Right Third and in that order, faithful fathers.

Speaker 1: 13:33

Everything else follows that and I would argue it's not a close fourth Right Like between third and fourth position Right. It's not close and right between third and fourth position. Right, it's not close fourth no one else has ever been called to be parent to my kids, right except me and my bride right exactly, and your vocation is fourth in that seat is where jeremy was going.

Speaker 2: 13:50

So I think that if your vocation keeps you from your um commitment to a higher obligation, your vocation is in the wrong place. And so I want to see, I want to hear, when I'm talking with candidates vetting side and also making the space for vacations, for rest time, for breaks between is when's the last time you saw your kids? When are you going to spend time with them? Next, I had a phone call between podcast sessions, recording sessions here, from one of my transitional pastors. Evidently I dialed him by accident, don't even know how, but he called me, and so we had a brief conversation and he's on vacation and waiting for his kids to come into vacation in part with them. That's good, that's a good sign, and to me I always want to be in the life of my kids as much as they'll let me. That's super important with your adult kids.

Speaker 2: 14:49

Let me say one more thing. Quite a number of ministers my age have got adult kids that don't profess the faith that they were growing up in, and that's difficult and painful, and I don't want to diminish that at all. It is very, very challenging, but who most needs you to be there for them. If they'll let you make the space, make the time to be there for them. Maybe you shouldn't be a transitional pastor. If your kids need you more, there's lots of ways to make money. But if your kids need you and you have the opportunity to love them and it keeps you from loving them in a quality way, that's its own problem, and I don't want to be in that spot. I don't. That's not the kind of spot that I want to be in.

Speaker 1: 15:29

They have the humanity, the human side of the transitional pastor lifestyle experience, deep impact for the transitional pastor himself, for his wife, for his children. You're saying this is not just a high calling, this is a hard calling.

Speaker 2: 15:48

Yes.

Speaker 1: 15:49

This is one that, if God has called you to, he will equip you for Yep. But this is not a walk in the park, this is not a hey, I'm getting close to retirement, so I may as well take this. This is not a hey, I'm getting close to retirement, so I may as well take this easy gig. This, in fact, puts more pressure, brings more pressure, brings a magnifying glass to whatever faults, whatever weaknesses in your underlying structure are already there, yep. And if it's not walked through well in humility, through reconciliation, through well in humility, through reconciliation, covered by the gospel, speaking the truth in love, it can actually cause much greater damage.

Speaker 2: 16:26

Absolutely.

Speaker 1: 16:26

Not for the faint of heart. Buyer beware.

Speaker 2: 16:30

But also exciting, exhilarating and fun.

Speaker 1: 16:33

Thank you, guys very much for coming with us. We'll talk to you soon. Thanks for listening to the Church Renewal Podcast from Flourish Coaching. Flourish exists to set ministry leaders free to be effective wherever God has called them. We believe that there's only one fully sufficient reason that this day dawned, jesus is still gathering his people and he's using his church to do it. When pastors or churches feel stuck, our team of coaches refresh their hope in the gospel and help them clarify their strategy.

Speaker 1: 17:02

If you have questions or a need, we'd love to hear from you. You can find us at flourishcoachingorg and you can reach us by email at info at flourishcoachingorg. You can also connect with us on Facebook, twitter and YouTube and we would love it if you would like subscribe, rate or review the podcast wherever you're listening. Please share this podcast with anyone you think it'll help and if we get a client because of the recommendation you make, we'll send you a small gift just to say thanks, and a special thanks to Bay Ridge Christian Church in Annapolis, maryland, for the use of their building to record today's episode. All music for this show has been licensed and was composed and created by artists. The Church Renewal Podcast was produced by me, jeremy Zaffirati, in association with Flourish Coaching, with the goal of equipping and encouraging your church to flourish wherever God has called you.