Priorities

 July 29, 2023

I think it’s time to get back in the game. When I was in Cuba, I had no internet access, so my nightly musings were confined to my daily journal, and by the time I got home, the habit had been if not broken, pretty badly mauled. So here I am, pondering what to say that has the possibility of being worth reading. I’ve settled on the events of this past week, but first need a bit of backstory.

When Linda and I first arrived in Sinclairville in 1981, our first meeting with the church administrative board set the stage for years to come. I knew my priorities, and told the board that if there were on the same evening a church meeting or something my kids were involved in for school, they shouldn’t look for me at the church meeting. I wouldn’t be there. I think there was a collective sigh of relief at that announcement, because as I later learned, Park church had many young families, and their parents were deeply supportive of their kids’ activities.

Fast forward to 2004. Linda and I were sitting in the bishop’s office answering charges that had been brought against me by a disgruntled parishoner. The charges were dismissed, but the bishop said something strange that afternoon. “You are too attached to your family,” she said. I was taken aback, and thought about this for about, hmm, sixty seconds. I had watched parsonage families for years, and had seen the wreckage wrought by churches that demanded and pastors who acquiesced in the misplaced priorities of “church first; family second.” While I never wanted to make my family my god, neither would I yield to the temptation to put the church in that position. It was clear in my mind: God first, family second, church third. While my children were in my home, they were my primary ministry responsibility. 

Last week, Linda and I tasted the fruit of those priorities, and it was sweet, indeed! We treated our children and grandchildren to the production of Moses by the Sight and Sound Theater, including two nights’ lodging. We had two days of unparalleled fun, both at the show, and at dinner and in the evenings when the grandkids crowded into one of the rooms to play the Wii that Ian brought, or joined a cutthroat game of cards in the lobby. I look back nearly twenty years to that meeting with the bishop and know I made the better choice, and am blessed many times over for the priorities we set even before our kids were born.