According to Lifeway Research, 43% of pastors say they need to give attention to work-life balance. Josh Goepfrich, pastor of Hilltop Community Church, joins Ben Mandrell, president and CEO of Lifeway Christian Resources, to discuss the Greatest Needs of Pastors study and navigating work-life balance in ministry.
By Staff
Ben Mandrell: Pastors say they need to give more attention to work-life balance. What are your thoughts?
Josh Goepfrich: Work-life balance—and not just work-life but work-life-family—is a big issue. I think we need to protect our families, protect our family time, protect our wives, and our children.
Ben Mandrell: What are some steps you’ve taken?
Josh Goepfrich: Our kids are pretty much out of the house now. We have one who’s a senior. But we still do “family night” on Saturday nights. And that’s always a special time. A lot of times now we let her pick what we’re going to be doing. But keeping a calendar and making appointments. Making appointments with myself, scheduling out, and blocking out that time for working out for studying.
Those are appointments that nobody has the ability to get into. And I think that’s important. I mean, if I’m blocking out time to go to the gym to work out, it’s a relief of stress. It’s taking care of yourself. It’s those types of things. I don’t want to change that. That’s the timeframe for that.
And I don’t necessarily have to tell people, “Well, I’m going to work out.” It’s “I have an appointment on the calendar already.” And blocking out my days. I tend to be more productive when my whole day is blocked out than leaving chunks of time. But I keep in mind the idea that God still has divine appointments.
So I need to be flexible with the “God time”—not “my time”—but not let other people necessarily determine that for me. I hope that makes sense.
Ben Mandrell: Yeah, I’m really grateful that you represent the small church pastor, because most of the people, honestly, that we do business with at Lifeway are small church pastors.
