Look behind the scenes at the daily workings of Living for God.

Our Ministry Journey

A Fun New Article

What's it like to be "Living for God" everyday as ministry partners? Here's your chance to peek behind the scenes at the daily workings of Living for God.

Cook Communications Ministries International recently asked us to tell our story in their publication, Cook Partners - the Online Magazine of Global Christian Publishing.

We were asked to share some of the challenges and rewards of being a "Married Team of Two" in our ministry. It was loads of fun and, we hope, instructive and inspirational to others in ministry.

A Married Team of Two

Calvin was edgy. In fact he’d been out of sorts all morning. It was our anniversary. As we walked hand in hand along the path to a peaceful rose garden, he finally blurted it out. “I feel like God wants me to quit my job and do our ministry full-time. But how could we ever swing it financially?” Lisa pondered for a minute and said, “I think there’s a way. Let’s go back home and figure it out.”

Well, we did figure it out. Our plan included lots of sacrifice. We trimmed our household budget. We were also practical enough to know that we would need some outside income because the ministry could not support us, so we devised various “tent-making” activities. Calvin has done weddings and funerals for people without a pastor. Lisa taught a class at a local college. And we rented out a room in our home.

We had previously incorporated our ministry, making it a full-fledged non-profit Christian organization. For the first couple of years, Lisa ran the ministry while Calvin worked a 30-hour-a-week job to help support us. But it became increasingly apparent that we really needed his gifts full-time or the ministry would never get off the ground. So we made the fateful decision to tighten our belts and bring him home.

How has it worked? Well, there’ve been successes and challenges. But by the grace of God, we have walked the path he showed us that day. We’d like to share how we’ve handled being a married team of two.

Early in our ministry we were asked to write a monthly column for a local Christian newspaper. It was later syndicated in publications around the country. But when we first started, we had decisions to make. Whose name would we use and how would we write it? We decided to do it together but we had to figure out how.

We developed a creative process to express our unique spiritual gifts, and we still use it today. First we pick a topic and decide on a slant. Then we brainstorm the major points and key phrases. Because of Calvin’s strong teaching gift, he writes the first draft. Then Lisa, the creative communicator, edits and “spiffs” up his work. A short conference irons out any differences. The process has worked so well that we’ve written major workshops and retreats this way.

Through the years we’ve organized more and more of the ministry according to our own talents and spiritual gifts. Calvin is an extrovert, a great teacher and a very friendly guy. So he’s a natural to call on pastors to introduce Living for God. Meanwhile, Lisa is just as friendly, but has a real gift for administration and loves handling all the business aspects of running the ministry.

Of course, we’ve made a few wrong turns in assigning tasks. Take, for instance, our web site. Calvin was to be our original webmaster. He worked through the software tutorial but when he actually tried to create a page from scratch, he went nowhere fast. So Lisa gave it a shot, and she was up and running in no time. We found that Lisa loves to work with graphic design and publishing software. Since we are a do-it-yourself operation, this has become a valuable skill.

Planning and scheduling has been an on-going challenge for our married team of two. Calvin comes from a corporate background of strategic planning and high performance teams. Lisa is the consummate entrepreneur who was a very successful solo achiever. We’re still trying to merge into a planning process with short-term goals and monthly activity schedules that will allow each of us to work independently. And, of course, even with careful planning, everything always seems to take twice as long as we think it will.

As with many other start-up ministries, we struggle to maintain our ministry activities while adding new projects. We currently publish a ministry newsletter five times a year, including a separate edition for pastors, have a comprehensive web site, maintain a blog, visit pastors and donors, syndicate our column, speak at churches and are about to publish books and study guides. That doesn’t even count all of the business aspects of running a ministry, like tax returns, financial statements, board of director meetings, and the like.

We’ve found that the more the ministry grows, the harder it is to keep everything going. We have a wonderful group of volunteers who help out on occasion. But since the ministry is mainly our own personal creative effort, there isn’t much we can truly delegate. We’ve also found that every step forward seems to take forever so we pray for patience.

On the personal side, we soon bumped up against the challenges of working as husband and wife. The most obvious problem is that we’re together 24 hours a day. Another issue is that we work at home. So we don’t really have an “office” to leave at the end of the day, and the work is always there.

We’ve discovered that sometimes we need a break from work—and from each other! So we’ve cultivated some individual friends that we see separately. We also try to make a distinction between our work and personal lives, but this doesn’t always help. We’re both so excited by Living for God that we just can’t wait to talk about our latest ministry ideas, even if it’s in the middle of the night.

There is one area where we haven’t struggled and it’s an important one. As we mentioned earlier, in order to devote ourselves fully to Living for God, we significantly simplified our lifestyle. We’re blessed to have similar attitudes about money. What we thought would be a sacrifice several years ago has become a simple and satisfying life together.

So has it been worth it? Absolutely. Being married and a team of two has its challenges and rewards. There have been times when we felt like giving up. But neither of us can imagine doing anything else. And we believe this attitude is one of the most important factors in our success as a ministry couple. We are both 100 percent committed to Living for God and to doing what it takes to advance the ministry.

In our hearts we believe that the Lord blessed our plans because we followed His will. He formed us for this purpose and He brought us together in ministry. We give thanks that we have been able to impact others through Living for God. Walking this path with our Lord and Savior has been the greatest blessing of our lives.

© 2007 Calvin R. Wulf and Lisa Aré Wulf