A Leader’s Top Priority: Leading Your Family
The best teacher and leader I have ever personally known on the subject of leading one’s family is my friend and my Pastor, Brian Bloye. He is passionate about teaching parents, with a strong voice on teaching men, how to lead their families effectively. He not only teachers these principles but also lives them out before us.
Brian Bloye is the Senior Pastor of West Ridge Church, Dallas, Georgia. This is a church he planted along with four other couples 15 years ago in Northwest Atlanta with a primary mission of reaching those in the community who were unchurched. Under Brian’s leadership West Ridge Church has grown to 5,000+ people and is having an impact locally, regionally and globally for the cause of Christ.
Recently Brian released his first book that he co-authored with his wife Amy, It’s Personal: Surviving and Thriving on the Journey of Church Planting (Exponential Series). This book is targeted to help church planters like themselves as they strive to build new churches, but the book packs so much more than just a how-to on church planting. It is also a great leadership book and especially good at teaching us how to lead our families.
Below I have posted some of my favorite highlights on the role of being a great family leader from his book. After reading these excerpts pick up a copy of his book and get the full picture of leading your family well in your current situation.
Leading Your Family
- God began to help me see that I couldn’t delegate the management of my family to him; he expected me to get my own priorities in order.
- In marriage, it’s far too easy for us to load each other down with so many hindrances and extra burdens that our steps become slower and we finally stumble. Our insecurity and negativity are weights. Our failure to find significance in Christ, demanding it from the relationship instead, is a weight. Chaos, busyness, discontentment — all weights.
- “If we blow it at home, we have blown it.” So make your kids a priority. We made a lot of sacrifices for the mission, but we did not sacrifice our kids.
- There are times you are going to have to disappoint someone; make sure it is not your kids.
- Satan doesn’t have to destroy you; he just has to distract you.
- What we feel is only one part of love. The other part is how we show it.
- I decided that if I was going to protect my marriage and my home, I was going to have to create hard and fast boundaries, then be consistent about observing them.
- Without boundaries, however, we will be consumed by the list of needs that is always growing. Our homes will always come in second place while we pursue the urgent things.
- Outside of your relationship with God, your top priority is your marriage and your home. This is biblical; it’s also common sense, and you should state it up front to your people without apology.
- We don’t answer the phone when we’re having dinner. Family dinner is an important time for us to be together and share our day.
- A recent study of teenagers and their parents found that families that ate dinner together were far more likely to raise healthy and well-behaved teenagers. Also, the children from such families were more likely to report feeling a closeness to their parents. When you ignore the phone to listen to your child during dinner, you’re showing your child who and what matters to you.
- And then there’s the cell phone. I can’t tell you how often I have lunch with a friend who keeps looking at his phone, checking for texts and email and voicemail. Amy finds that the wives of planters are usually irritated and hurt by their husbands’ constant need to be checking their phones. Are any of us really so important that we need to be networked every hour of the day? Don’t take yourself so seriously; go play with your kids! When you’re at home, as much as possible, put your phone out of the path of temptation. You may need to have it nearby for emergencies, but you don’t need to check it incessantly.
- As we began to start Genesis Church, we decided to be very intentional with how we valued our time and relationships as a family. From the beginning we put God first, each other second, our children third, and then whatever we might have left over, we give away to others. Although it is a constant battle, we fight hard to keep these values in place. Friday is our sabbath, simply meaning we cease. It’s our day to intentionally stop working, rest, date, let God fill us back up, and remind ourselves that it’s his church, not ours. God told the church in Revelation he would remove his lamp stand from them because they lost their first love. We decided to guard and keep our “first loves” in their correct order so that his lamp stand will continue to shine bright in the midst of us. — Tim and Tandy Grandstaff, Genesis Church, Orlando, FL
- If you live your life for God, you really don’t have to worry about what other people think. That part will work itself out.
- We want our kids to love God with all their hearts. We want them to love people. And we want them to respect us as their parents.
- However, we want our boys to leave our home with four truths deeply engrained in their minds: • God loves you unconditionally (John 3:16; Eph. 3:19) • You can trust him completely (Prov. 3:5 – 6) • He will never leave you (Deut. 31:6; Heb. 13:5) • Everything you need is “in Christ” (Col. 2:9 – 10)
- What about church activities? We let them decide the level of their involvement. Both of our boys are involved in sports, and they’ve played on traveling teams. There are many student events at church that they may end up missing. Baseball games may be scheduled for Sunday morning, so as a mother I sometimes choose to be at one of my sons’ games instead of at our worship service.
- We try to create a family environment where our children can love God and love the church — and love is something that cannot be forced but must be given freely.
- Our question therefore was, how will our children develop a firsthand faith? The answer, we’re learning, is that God allows different experiences in the lives of his people to move them toward total dependence on himself. Sometimes those experiences are painful and out of our control. It’s a challenge for us, as parents, to stand back and simply let God work in the lives of our kids. There are times when we wish we could slap a few people, forget the big picture, and throw character building out the door on the way to rescuing our boys.
- It’s our job to encourage, train, love, and support, but God has to become their God.
- He is the one who authored the manual of their lives and who plans to give them a hope and a future. We can’t dictate that future, nor would we want to. But we can trust God to do his best work in their lives. On the other hand, we have learned that there are moments when we do have to step in and rescue our kids.
- If there is significant harm threatening our kids, we need to do what’s necessary to protect them. God has entrusted them to us — even above our ministries.
- I heard someone say recently that parents today are so focused on giving their children everything they themselves never had that they forget to give them what they did have — the simple things in life, principles and values that were instilled in them as children, things that are far more valuable than the latest smart phone or video game.
- We want our children to see God with their own eyes rather than get the secondhand view that is filtered through our experience.
- Every evening, we pray together as a family. When my boys go to bed, I go into their rooms, get close to their ears, and say three things: “God loves you. You can trust him. Because of Jesus, you’ve got what it takes.” Then I tell them I love them.
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