Family matters

Lee Stephenson: Hey everyone. Welcome to the Unfiltered podcast — real conversations about church planting, the world and personal stuff and everything in between. My name is Lee Stephenson and I have the joy of serving Converge overseeing church planting nationally. And my co-host.

Danny Parmelee: I'm Danny Parmelee. And I oversee church planting for Converge MidAmerica.

Lee Stephenson: And obviously, things are continuing to be different. We've talked a little bit I think, in the past, Danny, about different seasons, like, are we going into a blizzard? Are we into the season of winter? And now it feels like when it comes to the pandemic and what's going on in our world, we're more in an ice age. Like it's, it doesn't seem like it's gonna end tomorrow and we're having to continue to revamp strategies and just life in general, not just church world but I think everything. I think about my family when it comes to getting groceries to school decisions right now. Everything is at the forefront. And my guess is same thing is true at your home.

Danny Parmelee: Yeah, absolutely. And I just so much of it, the hard part is really the unknown. It would be easier to to be like, OK, you have to wait six months before you do anything. But hey, once you hit that six-month mark, it's like it's impossible to plan and I think that's one of the most difficult parts about it.

Lee Stephenson: Yeah, I remember when we first saw this, on the forefront that it was coming, we were telling churches, hey, you have a 90-day game plan, you're going to be good. Well, we're now way past the 90-day game plan. And I know personally, in our church plant we've seen a lot of change take place over the last hundred plus days. Same thing is true as I talk to church planters around the country as well.

Danny Parmelee: Lee for you for family stuff. I'd love to dive into a little bit of that. What are you doing as a pastor? Just to, I guess, I shouldn't say keep normalcy, because that's impossible. But what are you doing kind of with your family? I mean, it's summertime. That's usually the time of vacations. I know you had some vacations planned. Were you able to take those? Did you not? And? Yeah, what? What's going on in the home front?

Lee Stephenson: Yeah, great, great question. We've taken up all kinds of new hobbies. Anything that even you know, looks appropriate or even a little bit appealing is like, oh, let's try that out. So early on, it was like knock out all the home projects, working as a family like building things. I build out a closet. You know, it was just trying to figure out how to get my mind off of things.

Then we moved into the second season of this and my family we took up fishing and so we've done a ton of freshwater fishing. Going out across the street and that's nice. I live in Florida, there's lakes everywhere. And we just literally walk across the street and you know, I caught a six pound bass across the street. So that's not a bad day. But you know it the mundaneness I think is what's killing us at this point. I've got three kids. They're bored out of their minds. We did travel this summer to Phoenix. So we got on a plane and made a trip out to see family in the Phoenix metro area, which was good, just to see some something different and to get out of our house for a little bit. It's weird traveling when you you know going through an airport and on an airplane in this season. We're already tired of masks and wear the mask everywhere you go. But at this point, I mean, Melissa and I are constantly just having conversations like, what's next? What do we do next? And yeah, it's hard with no real kids sports taking place and no understanding when things are going to pick back up even in their schedule. I mean, we've talked about buying a boat, just something to do in the evenings, you know, which I've always been a fan of have friends that have boats, you don't necessarily need to buy yourself a boat. We're at that point of desperation. And now we're kind of going, maybe it's time for us to get a boat.

Danny Parmelee: Could you expense that to the church and that's your new ministry outreach? You know, you can do a special capital campaign to buy the Stephenson family a boat?

Lee Stephenson: Yeah, I wish.

Danny Parmelee: You'd probably get a congregational yes vote on that right now. Because then you become that friend that has a boat.

Lee Stephenson: Exactly. Well, anybody out there, any listeners want to start a GoFundMe page to help us out. Be more than happy to do that for me.

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Lee Stephenson: Yeah, and I don't think you need to even feel guilty about that. I know we're pastors and church planter sometimes we internalize our breaks and feel like you know being unproductive is a sin. And the reality is it's okay to take time to rest it's okay to take time to build those those memories and sometimes you need to give yourself permission to go ahead and free up your schedule to go do that. Have you ever personally just wrestled through some of that too Danny?

Danny Parmelee: Um, you know, I for me, a lot of times it did it came during taking any sort of vacation and want not wanting to do anything exotic. What, you know, where just people are kind of looking at you and maybe are thinking that people were looking at me and, you know, thinking that it was indulging and doing things like that. So they're certainly always that wrestle. I think as a pastor, you're always wondering what other people are thinking. What type of car you drive, types of vacation. Wrestling through, Are you being productive? Are other people thinking I'm productive? And I know for myself during this time, and for pastors during this time, they are three times as busy and and I know there's times where I've been thinking, do people think I'm just like sitting home right now? Because it's like, I'm not producing church plants right now. I'm not traveling. They're used to seeing a newsfeed filled with travel and meeting with all these church planters. It's like I'm working twice, three times as hard. It just looks different. And it's the same with the church planners as well, too. They're not meeting for Sunday services, but all of the shifts and pivots have them working like dogs to do stuff. And so yeah, just to encourage guys not to wonder what other people are thinking.

Lee Stephenson: Yeah. And I agree, I think you really need to budget and think through, you know, if you're married, sit down with your spouse and just talk through like, what do we want to make out of the next month? And put some things on the calendar, figure out how you're going to maximize your time. When is work? And when are you going to take break? And it's hard when you work from home.

Danny Parmelee: Did you say to talk to your spouse and schedule when you make out for the month? because, for Emili and I, it's Mondays and Fridays.

Lee Stephenson: Oh, okay. We're a little more often than just twice a week.

Danny Parmelee: Okay. Okay. Hey, we said this is unfiltered, right?

Lee Stephenson: We put it out there as it is. So, but it is important to you know, take a look at the schedule and put things on the schedule. You know, are we going to do a game night? You know, what's the game of choice? We got into Monopoly for a couple weeks in our home and to the point where I'm tired of playing Monopoly. But my kids love it. And so we you know, we find ways to just keep them engaged and have fun with them. Well, friends, it's been fun and obviously the times are different and We want to take a little bit of time this episode just talk about family life and hear from what we're dealing with. And my guess is you're dealing with much of the same things as well. But thanks again for tuning in to the Unfiltered podcast. And until next time, keep it real.