I was serving a church in St. Petersburg, Florida, when it hit me hard. One of my young children had playfully fallen on the floor in the foyer after a worship service. A deacon in the church came up to me and spoke forcefully: “You need to tell your kid to get up. Pastors’ children aren’t supposed to act that way.”
My internal emotional reaction was carnal. I’m just glad I held my tongue. I was really mad. I can still remember my thoughts: “How dare this man hold my young son to a standard different than other kids! My boy really didn’t cause any harm. He was just being playful.
I recently conducted a Twitter poll of pastors and their spouses about this very issue. Though the poll was informal and not scientific, the responses were nevertheless fascinating. Here are the top seven responses in order of frequency. A representative comment or combined comments are given with each of the seven.
- Don’t expect more out of pastors’ kids (PKs) than any other kids. “My children need to have the same expectations as the other children in the church. They are not some kind of spiritual superstars because their dad’s a pastor.”
- Please offer encouragement to my children. “It’s not always easy to be a PK. The glass house thing is real. I am so thankful for the church members who go out of their way to encourage my children.”
- Realize that they are kids. “I know a few church members who seem to think my kids are miniature adults. They expect them to act like a 40 year old instead of a 4 year old.”
- Please don’t call them “PKs.” “Their identities should not be based on their father’s vocation. They have their own unique and special identities.”
- Please pray for my children. “I am blessed to have this one lady in my church who prays for my three children every day. She knows the special challenges of being a PK.”
- Our kids see and hear more than you may think. “After one particularly tough church business meeting, my seven-year-old boy asked me if I was going to get fired.”
- Don’t make me choose between my kids and the church. “Too many PKs have grown up bitter and disillusioned about the church. Dad gave more attention to church members than his own children.”
What do you think about these seven challenges? What would you add? What have your experiences been?
Posted on June 5, 2013
With nearly 40 years of ministry experience, Thom Rainer has spent a lifetime committed to the growth and health of local churches across North America.
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506 Comments
Sounds like that deacon is a legalistic jacka$$. Trouble is, most “christians” don’t understand legalism is a sin!
Not all pastor’s kids are defined by their father’s vocation, some are defined by their MOTHER’S! Pastor does not equal a male, let’s remember that. Being a woman in seminary has made me aware of all sorts of challenges that will come up when I am in ministry and am the reason my kids are “PK”s.
Not everyone has the right to speak into your kids life. As a pastors wife we always told our kids to respect others but that does not mean you have to accept what they say to you. My husband has always been very vocal from the pulpit that our kids are the same as any other kids and don’t put expectations on them. He also probably warded off some people addressing our kids because he put our expectations from the church with our family up front. God called him to his relationship with Him first, our family second and then the church. How can we expect our congregation know how to prioritize if we are not the examples.
Great points! My $.02
Guilty and Disappointing. Those are the words that summarize what it felt like (to me) to be a PK. “You should know better” is the phrase I heard and felt defined my life growing up. Rather than beating themselves up about being a disappointment I think many PKs just end up leaving the church.
I don’t, however, feel this is just a reflection of how PKs are treated. I think the PK gets a concentrated dose of a larger problem in the church – everybody’s too concerned about another persons’s sin. If we spent the attention on policing our own issues I think the PKs would get some relief. 🙂
I want to say i am a pastors kid and i wish someone would have told my church this when i was a kid
Wow! He hit the nail on the head. Too bad this technology wasn’t around in the 60’s to spread the word. Especially the last one. Fathers and no mothers that are pastors need to be role models to their congregation. The family needs to come before the needs of the meetings, this that and the other. I firmly believe if my father had shown me that if I was just as important as the parish, I would have made better decisions because I would have had a higher self-esteem. Social science today states that the nuclear family.
Agree with the list. Both my parents were clergy and did a good job of letting us be kids but there were church members who made it tough. If you want a sense for the hurt and problems that churches can cause for PK’s, check out some of the more painful posts in the facebook group “you might be a preachers kid if…”.
Thanks for writing this!
I saw this as a post on Facebook and followed it here last night–I even posted a letter my son wrote to his dad. But then I stayed up until 1 a.m. reading all of the responses and went to bed crying. My husband has been an associate pastor for 32 years–while our children were growing up. I know they faced critical people in the church and heard things I wish they’d never heard. And I had to defend my position as a parent more than once. But for the most part, they were loved and accepted with little expectations. They were treated like the other kids in the church. I grieve over the responses of minister’s kids who have been hurt…to the point of even leaving the church. That response alone says we’ve done something wrong. Are we more concerned over a building than a little person’s life? His future? His spiritual, emotional and mental health? Are we more concerned about disciplining him than encouraging him, loving on him, mentoring him? Are we just concerned about being RIGHT? It’s a BUILDING. The church is made up of PEOPLE. And we have a responsibility to these little people who belong to you and me. Young people who need to be loved into the kingdom. If I’m not mistaken, Jesus told us the two greatest things we can do is love God and love people. If we don’t do that…we soon won’t have to worry about kids running in the church. I’m just very, very sad more minister’s children don’t have a happy memory of church. My heart hurts. God bless each of you who have been wounded. May God heal those wounds.
About ten years into my husband’s ministry and six years after our first child was born, God freed me from the bondage of worrying about what the church thought of my children — He vividly showed me that it didn’t matter. Only what He thought of them mattered and He loves them more than my husband and I do. Praise Him!
Sorry, but I co not agree with some of the things in this article. I have never minded being a PK, In fact I am and was always very proud of it. My Mother and my Grandfather were also PKs. We were not held to a different standard because of what our father did, but held to the standards of our parents, which was more than likely higher than our church members would hold us.. If we were ever ridiculed or belittled by being called PK we did not know it, maybe because we held out heads up high and were proud of who we were, and proud of what our Dad’s profession was. I still am and I still call my self a PK, even though I am a great grandmother. I am a preacher’s kid, just like a teacher’s child is a teacher’s child and doctor’s child is a doctor’s child. Why should I hang my head over being called by the title of PK, a title that I hold in respect.? And we NEVER felt neglected! Dad was doing the job he was called to do.
I almost skipped over this article, but I’m so glad I didn’t! I grew up as a preacher’s kid and then my dad was called to be a missionary. I feel like that was a double whammy for me. People in the church always treated me differently because of who my dad was and what he did. He came home after I went to sleep most nights and missed out on plenty of family things because of how much time the church required of him. The last point of the article said, “Too many PKs have grown up bitter and disillusioned about the church. Dad gave more attention to church members than his own children.” I fully agree and it was almost a relief to see that I’m not alone in feeling that way. I’m 25 and married and my husband works at our church. He does video production and IT, but we are both noticing how much time it takes away from our personal time. I do my best not to be bitter about it, but I’m still bitter about how much time was taken away from me and my dad. PK’s need one-on-one time with their dads and the church doesn’t respect that. My dad and my husband are not on call 24/7. That’s the most frustrating part.
Wow. A lot of debate here. Kinda like being at a church business meeting. I have to admit I still have anxiety when walking into a church, still remembering how it felt to grow up with every word, piece of clothing, or activity fair game for debate. I can still remember walking in, hearing a woman say to another, “That’s the preacher’s daughter.” My dad was one of the good ones. It was like living with a Billy Graham type. He lived his life faithfully to his calling and, yes, at times the family took a back seat. A few years ago, though, I was reunited with a high school friend, and one of the first things she said to me was. “I’ll never forget how kind your father was to me when my dad died. I was young, and he took me aside, sat down with me, and answered all my questions.” Not many people can say that their parent left that kind of permanent impression on a friend. I have my issues today, mostly because I’ve seen the judgment many church members deal out in the name of Christianity. I choose to follow my Dad’s, and Jesus’ example of love that has been shown to me over and over. When my father died in 2012, my friend was there, and I watched as she walked to the casket, and whispered her thanks. Yesterday, that friend died from a brain hemorrhage, at age 54. I’m sure she knows the gift she gave me of her friendship, and also the gift of remembering that the job my father did really mattered to individuals, not just to a congregation.