GLORIETA, N.M. (BP)–Busy church workers can make time for family by setting priorities and then giving priority to those priorities, according to a Texas pastor with young children.
Ellis Orozco, pastor of Corpus Christi Baptist Church, Corpus Christi, led a conference on “Making Time for Your Family” during the Texas Baptist Family Reunion, July 4-10 at Glorieta (N.M.) Baptist Conference Center.
One pitfall church leaders face in making time for family is unrealistic expectations at home and at church. Another is the “super saint syndrome,” a feeling of indispensability, he said.
For some, the pitfall is procrastination. “We get involved in busy work to avoid doing what we really don’t want to do,” he confessed.
Another pitfall, he said, is the “might as well be at the office” syndrome, characterized by the church worker who is preoccupied with church concerns when he is at home, or the family that spends time in the same house but in different rooms.
Orozco offered suggestions for ways to make family time:
— Set your priorities. Know what is the main thing. Limit priorities to seven or fewer. “For a Christian, ‘God activities’ are number one,” he said. “But that is not necessarily the same thing as church activities.”
— Prioritize your priorities. “That’s making the main thing the main thing,” Orozco explained. “Live by the calendar, not the ‘to do’ list.” He suggested keeping the list of priorities in the calendar, labeling events on the calendar ‘P1,” “P2” or whatever to correspond to those priorities.
— Live your priorities. Get things done. Give priority time to those things that have priority value.
