Pastors! Being a 'present parent' is crucial

Ask any experienced church minister with family what the most dangerous hours of the week are, and many will tell you: four until seven in the evening.

Not Sunday morning, when the adrenaline is flowing. Not the pastoral crisis call at midnight. The danger hours are the ordinary ones – the school run, the homework battles, the dinner that needs cooking, the children who simply want their parent home. These hours do not feel like ministry. They feel like an interruption to it. That instinct is precisely what needs to be resisted.

Managing one's own household

Guarding the four–seven pm slot is not a concession to domestic life at the expense of the church. It is an act of faithfulness.