Two quotes from pastors came to my mind. Alexander MacLaren said when he was invited to lecture in the prestigious Yale Lecture series on preaching, that he turned it down. He turned it down because it would have taken him away from his preaching ministry at Union Chapel in Manchester. MacLaren put forty hours a week into the one sermon he preached. That means he said “No” frequently. Because of his dedication to preaching to his flock, we still read his sermons today in Expositions of Holy Scripture.
Erwin Lutzer, the former pastor of Moody Memorial wrote, “Every time we say yes to our family we say no to our church.” Of course, what Lutzer meant was, that there is always something more we pastors can be doing at or for our church. We can always pray some more, prepare a sermon some more, visit some more, etc. We must, however, say no to doing some more in these ministries because our family is also our ministry. It is important to note that the first overarching qualification “a bishop must be blameless” is the pastor must be “the husband of one wife” or “a one-woman man.” MacLaren and Lutzer provide a proper balance for engaged pastors.