Moving far from home, part 2

At our recent General Assembly I spoke with several friends who had moved a long way from "home" and family, and gleaned some interesting comments and reflections on their experiences. (Read part one here.)

Now let's consider a comment from "John" whose family is from Alabama, and who is now a pastor in California. Here's what John said:

"The best advice I received was from [a seminary professor] who said, 'you just need to negotiate into your terms of call that they will fly your whole family home once a year.' So we did-- and now there's a line-item in the church budget for $2,500 of airfare for my whole family to fly back!"

This is a great idea. Airfare is expensive enough for one or two, but John and his wife have several children. For most pastors, the cost would simply be prohibitive to think of paying for that every year, or even every other year. Or at very least, it might keep them from being able to afford other vacation time, as a couple or as a family.

With John's arrangement, however, they are free to simply not worry about the biggest part of the costs of visiting family. The first year they were there, John and his family flew back to Alabama around Christmas-- about six months after they had moved. Surely this was a great comfort, both to John's family and to their extended families.

The upside of this, among other things, is that the burden of traveling expenses is carried by neither John's family nor their parents or siblings. It's easy to think that extended family might simply travel out to see them in California, but that can get costly too (even if it is only one set of parents, with airfare for only two instead of five or six). This solution tempers that problem, at least a bit.

The downside, obviously, is that this represents a substantial financial commitment for the congregation. Some congregations may not be able to afford it. Others, while sympathetic, may not be willing to make such a large investment. (I would counter the latter, however, by pointing back to Brian's comment about how hard the decision can be to move so far from family, and suggesting that an unwilling approach in the short term may have unfavorable consequences in the longer term.)