About 4-6 weeks before any conference is crunch time for all complicated projects, books, CDs, and DVDs that need to go to production for the conference. There are stressful deadlines that have to be met. And many times the pressure of those deadlines falls right in the middle of spring break. Family time.
When I first started working at North Point, about nine years ago, we hosted the Grow Up Conference. This was a great conference for family ministry leaders.
One year I was asked to lead two projects in preparation for the conference. The conference book and a new preschool music CD. What a privilege to be asked to work on such incredible projects. I was excited!
When the pressure was on and the deadlines started drawing near, I started telling my children about this CD and how cool it was that I got to work on it. I thought they would be so impressed. Even with all of our hard work and planning, a few complications came up and the deadline was pushed to the middle of spring break.
Here I was, heading out of town with my family, and forced to be on email in order to keep things moving forward and meet our deadline. Kids were at the beach with dad - mom was promising to be out as soon as she could. When they came in I said things like, “Hey, listen to the final mix of this song. Isn’t it cool?” They said things like, “What’s for lunch?” And “when are we going to the pool?”
Here is the lesson learned:
The cool things that you create will not impress your children.
(If they are anything like my children, they won’t even take the time to listen to the CD. It was for preschoolers after all.)
Your children WILL be impressed by the time that you spend with them and the MEMORIES you create.
I still get to work on cool projects. But I’m much more careful to guard my time and I keep family vacations “off-limits.”
Yes, it’s fun to work on cool projects, but honestly, it’s not all that impressive. At least it’s not impressive to the people who really matter most to me.
I challenge you ministry leaders - IMPRESS your kids!
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