The Best Investment We Made Wasn’t Financial
What 30 years of ministry marriage taught us about what actually pays off
I was 23. Dave was 29. That’s where this story starts.
Four kids by the time I was 33. One vehicle between us for stretches of time. Dave was a church-planting pastor, which means that while Sunday was the main event, it was never the only event. There were mid-week services, youth ministry, men’s ministry, retreats, weddings, funerals, and crisis calls at hours that had no business being anyone’s working hours. Ministry doesn’t clock out. We learned that quickly.
We also opened our home in ways that went beyond hospitality. Teenagers — some of them carrying more than teenagers should ever have to carry — moved in with us. Some stayed weeks. Some stayed months. Some stayed for years. We said yes because that’s what you do when you’re called and you mean it.
And while Dave led the church, I was right beside him — running women’s ministry, teaching in Sunday school, coordinating volunteers, preaching when needed, and yes, cleaning the church. All while working outside the home.
We were not wealthy. We were not leisurely. We were not coasting.
And somewhere in the middle of all of that, Dave and I made a decision that some people didn’t understand and one that we’ve never regretted.
We chose to invest in our family’s experiences together.
Not extravagantly. Not carelessly. We paid cash as much as possible. We planned carefully. We sacrificed in many other areas to make it happen. We used timeshares. We took road trips. We looked for ways to give our children a wider world without going into debt to do it.
And now, thirty years later, I want to tell you what that actually produced. Because I think some of you, especially those of you early in ministry, early in marriage, early in the beautiful and exhausting work of raising a family while serving a congregation, need to hear this before it’s too late to choose it for yourselves.
Ministry Will Take From You. Decide In Advance What It Cannot Have.
There is a particular kind of loss that happens quietly in ministry families.
It doesn’t announce itself. There’s no single moment where everything breaks. It’s more like a slow erosion. The Sunday that bleeds into Monday, the counselling session that runs through dinner, the crisis call at 10 pm that derails the family vacation plan, the year that somehow passes without a single intentional memory made together.
And then one day, the kids are grown. And they’re polite. And they come home for Christmas. But something is missing. Some thread of genuine closeness, some ease, some wanting-to-be-there that you can’t manufacture after the fact.
I’ve watched this happen to good people. Faithful people. People who genuinely loved God, genuinely loved their congregations, and genuinely believed they were doing the right thing.
They just forgot to protect something sacred in the process.
Your children should not receive the leftovers of your calling.
I mean that gently, and I mean it seriously.
The church will always need more from you. The expectations of ministry, especially on a pastor’s family, are rarely reasonable and almost never fully acknowledged. If you wait for a natural pause, for a less demanding season, for the right time to prioritize your family, that time will not arrive on its own.
You have to decide in advance what ministry cannot have.
For Dave and me, one of those things was this: our family’s shared life. The experiences we built together. The memories we refused to postpone until retirement.
We Chose Connection Over Appearances
We were not building a lifestyle that looked a certain way from the outside. We were building something else entirely.
Road trips where the conversations got real somewhere around hour three. Experiences that gave our children a broader perspective on the world… on people, on culture, on how differently life can look depending on where you’re standing. Intentional pauses from the grind, where we were just a family together, without the roles and the weight of everyone else’s needs pressing in.
We took rest seriously. Not as laziness, anyone who knows our family knows that laziness has never been the problem, but as a discipline. As a counter-cultural act of faith that said: we are not machines, our children are not projects, and our marriage is not a casualty we’re willing to accept in the name of serving others.
Some people didn’t understand it.
Some people didn’t like it.
People often judge visible fruit without understanding the invisible discipline behind it.
That’s fine. We kept going anyway.
We were never waiting for permission to live well. We were too busy building something worth coming back to.
But How Did You Actually Afford It?
I can hear the question already. Because we asked it as well… but never with defeat. Always with curiosity.
We started with prayer. Not as a formality but as a genuine first step. Asking God to lead, to provide, to open our eyes to what we couldn’t see yet. And then we asked a better question: not “can we afford this?” but “what would need to be true for us to make this happen?”
The “How can we afford this?” question can be asked in two ways!
This reframe changes everything. It puts your brain to work instead of shutting the conversation down. It invites creativity instead of defeat. And it leaves room for God to show up in ways you didn’t anticipate.
When our kids were old enough to understand, we brought them into that conversation too. We didn’t shield them from the reality that family experiences required planning and sacrifice. We invited them in. Asked them how they could participate and contribute to something bigger than themselves. We were forming them even in the planning.
Here’s what that actually looked like in practice:
Live within what you actually have – fiercely protect that!
I want to acknowledge something honestly before I say this, because I think it matters.
When Dave and I were starting out, our first home cost $155,000. Our mortgage payment was roughly half of what my oldest pays in rent today. The economic landscape young families are navigating right now is genuinely harder than what we faced, and I’m not going to pretend otherwise.
But here’s what was also true: Dave was making well under $30,000 a year for much of our early ministry. We had four kids. One car. At first, I sold Pampered Chef on the side, while working a full-time “day job.” He dug pools in the summer and worked overnight looking after adults with special needs. All the while leading and growing a church plant. We took in international students. We rented out our basement. We said no to a lot of things that other families around us were saying yes to. Not because we were noble, but because we were determined not to spend money we didn’t have.
The decision that protected us most was simple: Dave’s paycheque covered our household bills. Mine covered family experiences, the kids’ expenses, and groceries. That boundary was non-negotiable. It meant our fun money was never in competition with the mortgage. It existed separately, on purpose, so that when we were ready to book a road trip, plan a camping week, or buy a timeshare, the money was already there, waiting.
The numbers will look different for your family than they did for ours. The principle doesn’t change.
And then look creatively at what else you can bring in. A side hustle. A rental suite. International students. A skill you can monetize. The gig economy has created more flexible income opportunities than existed when I was selling Pampered Chef at kitchen parties. Use them.
The question is never really about the numbers. It’s about the priority.
One of the best decisions we made was buying into a timeshare (Bluegreen Vacations, now owned by Hilton) when our youngest was around three or four. The initial purchase was modest. It gave us one to two weeks a year at locations we could drive to along the eastern seaboard. Affordable. Reachable. Ours. As our income grew, we upgraded. In the last decade, we’ve added options that take us to Mexico… which, if you know me at all, you know that is where I am happiest. But it started small. It always starts small.
Let your gifts open doors.
I started blogging in January of 2006. By 2010, what started as a creative outlet had become a genuine resource for our family. Free tickets to entertainment venues and amusement parks. Clothes for the kids. Hygiene products. Furniture. Electronics. Summer camp covered. Household items we would have paid full price for, coming through the door because I had built a platform and learned how to use it strategically.
We understood what could be written off. We treated it like the small business it was, because it was.
None of that happened by accident. It happened because I asked myself an honest question: what do I have that could create access?
That question is worth sitting with. The answer will look different for everyone.
Maybe it’s writing. Maybe it’s photography, hospitality, a trade skill, a professional network, a talent for negotiating, a gift for connecting people. You may already be sitting on something valuable.
Ask God to show you what it is. Then use it without apology.
Be strategic, not just frugal.
We researched the best rewards credit cards available and deliberately ran household bills, car insurance, life insurance, and regular expenses through them. Then we paid them off. My 17 years in banking taught me how to make financial products work for us rather than against us. Our Aeroplan points funded flights that our budget never could have. This isn’t complicated. It’s just intentional.
Start scrappy and stay grateful.
Our first handful of years of family travel was in a tent. Then a pop-up trailer. Then, we got an RV on a trade. Then, a park model trailer at our favourite family campground was gifted to us. Provincial parks, open roads, kids in sleeping bags, campfire meals. It wasn’t luxury. It was ours. And those memories are just as alive in our family today as any resort trip we took later. Don’t wait until you can do it well. Start with what you have.
What Formation Actually Looks Like
It was never really about the trips.
The trips were a vehicle. A context. A deliberate carving-out of time where our family could exist together without ministry pressing in from every direction. What we were actually doing was formation.
We were forming our children’s curiosity, their capacity for wonder, their adaptability and gratitude. We were forming our family’s culture… a shared history, inside jokes, meaningful moments, hard-won lessons that belong only to us.
We were forming our marriage. Choosing again and again to be a couple who still genuinely liked each other. Who still had stories to tell together. Who weren’t strangers by the time the kids left home.
Formation is not accidental. It requires intention, sacrifice in the right places, and the courage to say no to some good things in order to protect something essential.
The Dividends Are Relational
Dave and I are at an age now where we can see the fruit of what we planted.
Not financial fruit. Relational dividends that are, honestly, worth more than anything else we could have accumulated. Our adult children still want to be around us. Still want to be around each other. There is genuine warmth, genuine closeness, genuine gratitude, not the strained politeness of a family that survived together but didn’t particularly enjoy the process.
We didn’t build a perfect life. We built a connected one.
And I want to say clearly to every ministry family reading this who is still in the early years, still in the middle years, still in the season where the choices are in front of you:
It is not too late to choose this.
What your children need is not luxury… It’s you! Present. Engaged. Building something intentional with the time you actually have. Ministry is a calling worth honouring. But your family is a calling too.
Thirty years from now, when your children are adults sitting around your table, choosing to be there, not because they have to be, but because you built something worth coming back to, you will not regret a single intentional investment you made in them.
I promise you that.
Looking back now, I don’t regret the money we spent creating memories together. I don’t regret the trips, the laughter, the shared experiences, or the intentional pauses from the demands of life and ministry.
Because now, at almost 54 and 60, the dividends are sitting around our table.
And all four of our adult children, their spouses, and their children want to be there. That is our Legacy!
