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J DFM 2.2 (2012): 86-87
Equipping the Generations:
Family Ministry and Motherhood
DONALD S. WHITNEY
Dr. Whitney
is Associate
Professor
of Biblical
Spirituality
and Senior
Associate
Dean of the School of
Theology at the Southern
Baptist Theological
Seminary. He has authored
six books, including
Spiritual Disciplines for
the Christian Life and is a
popular conference speaker,
especially on personal and
congregational spirituality.
He served in pastoral
ministry for twenty-four
years.
Twenty-four years of pastoral ministry
have taught me that moms—especially
mothers of young children—often
come to church feeling tired, then
return from church feeling guilty.
While at church, they hear sermons
and announcements about doing
evangelism and serving in the church,
and they often sense that they are
failures at both. There never seems
to be enough time for their maternal
responsibilities of cooking, cleaning,
changing diapers, wiping noses, and
teaching their children, much less for
reaching out to a lost world with the
gospel of Jesus in fulfillment of his
Great Commission or for building up
the body of Christ in their local fellowship.
Even finding a few minutes
for Bible reading and prayer occasionally
is difficult.
Thus the pulpit proclamations
of the biblical mandate to reach the
nations for Christ, and the earnest
pleas of the pastor about the need for workers in the
church do not sound like spiritually-galvanizing challenges
that inspire greater faithfulness, rather they often
fall as crushing condemnations upon the weary hearts
of many moms.
Seasons change in everyone’s lives, and perhaps
there is no more radical change that occurs in the life
of a woman than the one that happens the day her first
child arrives. It’s a season that changes with dramatic
suddenness and lasts as long as there are young children
around the dinner table and until she has watched her
final soccer practice and piano recital. And among the
parts of life that seem forced into hibernation during
this season are private devotions, personal evangelism,
and consistent ministry in the local church.
My wife and I have a friend named Jean who was one
of the countless Christian women who felt as though
her options as a believer were either family or spirituality;
children or church. Discipled well after her conversion
in her late teens, Jean thrived on a spiritual diet
meaty with disciplines like the reading, studying, and
meditating on God’s Word, prayer, fellowship, service,
evangelism, worship, solitude, journal-keeping, and
Scripture memory. She felt herself making spiritual
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