I know how it looks. I know how it sounds. Dad has two phones. We all know there are typically two kinds of people who have more than one phone: philanderers and drug dealers. Neither of them people who should be in any sort of ministry role. And here I am with my two phones. Which one of those am I? You must be wondering.

I can assure you neither of the aforementioned wrong’uns. For a start, my wife knows all about my two phones. In fact, whilst I’m not aware that she has ever bothered to do so, she knows the passwords to them and is welcome to look at them whenever she wants. That rules out any philandering on my part. Whilst I recognise I ocassionally dress like one and maybe keep some insalubrious company at times, unless my wife is the secret and less suspect brains behind the operation, her access to my phones should hopefully put to rest any fear of my being some sort of drug baron.

So why do I have two phones? I have a main phone that I use 6 days a week, 47 weeks of the year. I also have a separate phone that I used one day a week, and every day for just 5 weeks of the year. My main phone is the one everyone has access to and through which I can get email, whatsapp and every other form of available communication on which you can get me. My other phone number is known by my wife and my parents and that’s about it. It doesn’t have an email app installed and it is generally uncontactable. Let me explain why.

Uninterrupted time

Prior to having my second phone, in years of ministry, I hardly ever had an uninterupted day off. Every Monday (my day off) and almost every holiday received at least one, more usually several, messages and phone calls about church matters deemed of vital importance. Almost none of them were ever actual emergencies and I cannot remember many where I could meaningfully do anything about them from wherever else I happened to be in the world. Given that I could be of no help under these circumstances, it made no sense to welcome the interuptions that I could do nothing about. Having a second phone has helped with that.

Impact on family

When I entered ministry, my wife and I understood what we were signing up for. We fully understood that access to our time, energy and resources would be frequently called upon and not always when we deemed it convenient. We had no concerns about that, we still have no complaints about that. We knew what we were getting into. To be fair to my children, they never signed up for this, but they have happily got on with the situation that one of them has known since 6 months old and the other was born into. They understand the situation as it is.

What is more of an imposition is that the church has access to the lion’s share of my time 6 days a week, 47 weeks of the year. One day a week, and five full weeks of the year, were my family’s. It doesn’t take much to see how having that considerably smaller proportion of time constantly interrupted could lead to proper resentment in your family. Worse, if these interruptions meant dropping family time in order to go and sort those things out, one’s family will draw a lesson from that: the church is more important to you than them.

That lesson is most unfortunate indeed. Not least, the biblical qualifications for eldership list dealings with your family among them. One is qualified for ministry based on how one manages their family. Ironically, conintually allowing the church to interrupt your time with your family – allowing it to always push your family into second place – is to disqualify yourself from the role you are apparently prioritising! One helpful way to resolve that issue has been to get a second phone so that my time with my wife and children is uninterrupted and belongs exclusively to them.

Mental and emotional wellbeing

I don’t presume to suggest that pastoral ministry is necessarily uniquely hard or difficult among all jobs. I’m not entirely sure it is true. Nor do I think it is the only one that has frequent interruptions (though, for all the same reasons, those in professions that have such might want to think about this too). But one thing I have found different in pastoral ministry to other jobs I had is the emotional weight and pressure of the issues that arise. In other jobs I have done, if I was interrupted outside of work hours, the specific pressure point was not typically a matter of major emotional strain and it was (often) chalked up as just something to do on Monday. Pastoral ministry, in my experience, is just a different beast on that front. I don’t intend to explain or justify that here: I am just noting it as a brute reality for me.

What that tended to mean was that the interruptions and messages I got on my holiday were not just short, irritating interruptions. Some of them were just that. A matter I can attend to when I’m back and spend no more time on it. A little irritating to get it now, but no big deal. But many issues were something more than that. I could do nothing about them whilst I was on holiday, but you could bet your bottom dollar – if they landed in my inbox on the first day of my time off – I would be thinking about it, stressing about it, worrying about how to address it for the rest of the week or, minimally, for the whole of my day off. It meant time off was never actually time off because you could not switch off. There was no break.

The upshot of that sort of thing is twofold. It is particularly bad for your mental health. Days off and holidays that are supposed to be means of recuperation and respite, re-energising you to get back to the work, soon become times of foreboding as you spend the entirety of your time worrying about what you will face on your return. Second, and perhaps worse, it totally ruins time with your family. Rather than spending meaningful and enjoyable time with them, you instead find yourself preoccupied with matters that you cannot shake from your mind. Your family are not only dealing with interruptions to the limited time they get, they have the enterity of their time ruined by matters that could wait but have now taken up time, brain space and emotional energy. Family’s get left with the absolute dregs when this happens.

Having a second phone stops this happening. Whatever bombshells hit your inbox or land in WhatsApp will be discovered on our return. We can spend time with our family in blissful ignorance of whatever else may be going on and can give them the time, energy and emotional investment they deserve. We can drill our churches on not doing this sort of thing all we want; my experience is it never works. The message never gets through and most simply do not and will not understand or recognise the emotional upheaval it causes. Many simply want to get their message off their plate so it is no longer bothering them (largley for the same reasons as we don’t want to hear it on our holiday!) Having a second phone quickly and simply resolves this matter.

The unfortunate alternative

The other option is to remain ‘always on’. Some may have the capacity for that. I strongly suspect very few of us are built that way. As I noted here, Jesus didn’t have a smartphone and it does change a little about how we view and understand his ministry. Most of us are not built for this and few of us will have the capacity to endure it without facing burnout or worse.

The other fact we have to face is the impact this all has on our families. Stories abound of children who grew up to hate Christ and his church because their fathers taught them – either explicitly or implicitly – that the church always comes first. I have personally known more than a few people who have something of a difficult relationship with their parents, and some with the church itself, because they were constantly second to other people. Worse, when they came second to their own parents looking after other people’s children at church events! I understand there will be times we have to say ‘no’ to our children because there are other demands on our time. This is true in whatever job or life circumstances we may find ourselves. But if that is all our children ever hear, if it is what our wives constantly hear, we can’t be that surprised if they come to the conclusion that either they don’t matter so much to us or, worse still, that Jesus thinks they don’t matter because he always wants their father/husband to be doing other things.

Not only is it destructive to family life, it is similarly no good for the ministry either. A pastor who is having to continually let his family down, and whose family resent the constant interruptions and dragging away, is not going to be more effective in his ministry. He is going to feel pulled in multiple directions and feel like he is failing when he inevitably upsets one or other sides demanding his attention. Few people thrive when they are only too aware of failing to live up to expectations, even when those expectations are utterly unreasonable. Pastoral ministry has enough inherent pressures without us creating more of them. Churches would benefit most from happy pastors who are given the freedom to love their families well. After all, if they can’t love their family well because of church demands, churches have to reckon with the fact they are forcing their pastor into sin and causing him to effectively disqualify himself.

If the means of honouring the pastor’s day off, to ensure his day off is sacrosanct, to not interrupt his time off – especially when he is with his family – is to get him a second phone which makes him inaccessible for one day a week and 5 weeks or the year, where he is incommunicado and **shock of shocks** members may have to speak to another elder, that seems to me to be a small price worth paying. And the cost is super-cheap. I have an old smartphone which is perfectly adequate. I have a sim-only deal with 5gb data that costs a few pounds per month (I only need it one day a week and 5 week of the year). But I have better emotional wellbeing as a result and family time that is focused on just that without any fear of everything being sidetracked and dominated by an unsolicited issue that lands and dominates our time and emotional energy.

And so, I have a burner phone. If you are a pastor, I would strongly suggest – for your sake, for your wife’s sake, for your children’s sake – that you get one too. If nothing else, it’ll make your next day off awesome!