The One Thing That Keeps us United in Ministry.

Standing United in Marriage while Serving in Ministry

Hello everyone! I’m Hannah, writing this all the way from New Zealand. I blog about Youth Ministry and love, love, LOVE seeing Youth Ministries around the world find their flavor and flourish in any circumstance.

My husband, Charles, and I run the Youth Ministry at our church together while he works full-time as a nurse and I am a stay-at-home mama to a busy toddler. I handle most of the admin and behind-the-scenes prep for Youth. As well as blogging, haha. To say we are busy is an understatement sometimes!

Carmen has asked me to share with you today about how Charles and I are united in ministry, and how we do ministry together.

I am excited to share this with you because doing ministry together is close to my heart!

But first a little of where we come from. I grew up a typical country kid, on the family farm in rural southern New Zealand. Charles, on the other hand, grew up in the busy city of Singapore. We grew up with very different family traditions, values, and culture. Our understanding of what it meant to be a Christian was quite different too. We couldn’t have had more contrasting backgrounds to our stories! Yet somehow we work really well together as a team.

Today I’m sharing with you the biggest thing that we’ve learned that enables us to work well together and stay united. It doesn’t matter how different your backgrounds are, this one thing will unite you.

AND THAT IS HONOR.

Honor is so crucial in your marriage and ministry. I’ve heard it said that honor is a currency in the Kingdom of God, and without it we don’t have that freedom that comes through Christ. Let’s be real here, I’m not very good at practicing honor. But by God’s grace I am learning. So today allow me to share 3 areas where I’ve learned that you need to honor your spouse, and especially when you’re in ministry together:

HONOR EACH OTHERS PASSIONS

I think there’s something really powerful about this that many couples don’t fully understand, even Charles and I. But I am a firm believer in a wife honoring her husband’s passions and strengths. Let me share some of our story..

Charles has always had a passion for Youth Ministry, and one of his strengths is connecting with others right where they’re at. During our dating years he was involved in a young adults connect group and I was involved in pioneering a creative team (my passion). But when we got engaged we started to talk about doing something together, and being in ministry together, because until that point we had been doing our own thing. Long story short, we ended up in Youth Ministry, which back then was not an interest or passion of mine at all! Yet because I knew it was a passion of Charles’ I wanted to support him in it as much as I could. And God is so good to develop into a passion of my own.

You can’t be united in ministry if one of you is not fully supporting the other’s passions.

You can’t expect your spouse to support you in your passions if you aren’t supporting them in theirs. It wasn’t until I’d committed to honoring Charles’ passion for Youth Ministry that it also became my passion. I don’t feel that I’ve lost out on anything from this. I still have that passion for Creative Ministry! Yet I am able to incorporate this passion into Youth Ministry and develop a creative team there. Our two ‘separate’ passions have ended up complimenting each other rather than competing for attention.

HONOR EACH OTHER’S TIME

This is more than being organized. It’s knowing what you can and can’t do in terms time and energy. You have to be united in this area and make sure you’ve got each other’s backs! Look out for each other and look after each other.

Part of honoring each other’s time is prioritizing certain tasks and saving your energy for them. To honor each other here is to not demand more of the other person’s time or energy than they can afford, so they are able to do that prioritized task well. For us, for example, Youth on Fridays is a priority, as is Charles’ work during the week. I can honor Charles in these areas by making sure I have completed my own tasks for Youth in time, and by making sure I don’t keep him up talking too late so he can get a good rest before work the next day.

Another part of this is being organized. Write your commitments on a calendar or use an app (we use Cozi because it’s compatible with many devices), keep a daily to-do list, and put systems in place to make sure you stay on top of your weekly tasks. Honor each other’s time by being organized and helping each other to be organized. I am honestly one of the most unorganized people in the world and struggle daily in this area. So I’m conscious to work on that so I can honor Charles’ time and energy better.

Another part of honoring each other (which I highly recommend) is having a regular ‘family Sabbath’.

I take notice of when our calendar is filling up and there’s something on every night, so we don’t burn out. At the end of an extremely busy week or two, I’ll book in a day as a family Sabbath day. For our family this is simply a day where we have absolutely nothing planned. We’ll spend the day together doing whatever it is we feel like or need to do to recharge. Sometimes this is making a yummy dessert and eating it while we watch a movie together. Other times it is a spontaneous road trip around the coast or a walk through the park. Whatever it is, the idea is to be together and to recharge.

HONOR YOUR VOWS

We all have bad days and rough seasons. And in marriage you get to journey these together, not alone. When you’re in the midst of a rough patch with your spouse, remember you’re on the same team. You’re both working towards the same goal. Honor your vows of “for better and for worse”.

When you’re in ministry, you are setting the example. Everyone you lead is watching you, learning from you. How do you handle the rough seasons? The mundane seasons? Do you still love each other? How do you trust God in the midst of darkness? Do you smell of smoke when you’ve been through the fire? People are watching how you handle trials, and one of the best gifts you can give them in those times is hope. When you honor those words you spoke, “for better and for worse”, you are giving hope to others. Hope that you can go through the hard stuff and still love each other. Hope that you can trust God in any season.

There’s so much more I could say about this, but the bottom line is to honor those vows you made before God. “For better and for worse” means for better and for worse.

I hope you find this encouraging for your own marriage and ministry. I am by no means an expert on this topic, but I know enough to know that honor is essential in both these areas!

Honoring each other is so key to being united for ministry!

-Hannah

I am blessed to have Hannah from Tansquared Youth Ministry guest posting for Married by His Grace. Hannah’s blog offers tips about starting a Youth Ministry, building relationships, encouraging youth, activities for Youth Ministry, and much more. If you are a leader of any type of small groups, I highly recommend visiting Tansquared Blog to get as all the awesome tips that you can. Hannah is a blessing and encouragement to many that are building a small group ministry. You can check Hannah Tan’s  Blog Here. You can also check her out on Instagram