Tuesday is My Pastor's Date Night

My wife and I are both PKs (pastors' kids - for those of you who don't know). And both of our shiny, happy families disintegrated when our pastor dads left our pastor's wife moms. Her family split when she was six; mine finally tanked when I was in seminary.

Needless to say, we both learned a lot about pastor's families. Mostly what not to do. I'm shocked I'm a pastor. And my wife is shocked she's married to one.

So, when we were first getting serious about being in a relationship together, we put some safeguards in place to keep us from the kind of non-relationship that destroyed our parents.

One of those is date night. Ever since we've been married, we've always taken one night per week for date night. It usually means dinner out and a movie in. But sometimes it means Taco Bell and a trip to Barnes&Noble. The point is that we are intentionally making special time for each other on a weekly basis.

When we had our firstborn, it was a little harder to have date night. But as soon as he was old enough, we set up a babysitting co-op for Tuesday nights with a couple of other young families. So now we have date night 3 out of 4 Tuesdays (it's our turn to babysit the other week).

My church knows about date night. They know not to call me on Tuesday evenings. Ever. I put it on my work-schedule that I share with all of my members. And I enforce it. It makes its way into sermons (when I preach about the Sabbath, I talk about date night; it helps people see Sabbath in a relational way and reinforces my date night boundaries).

Not only is date night good for my sanity and the strength of my marriage, it's good modeling for the other families in the church.