Ministry Kids Need NOT Apply

The Benediction has been pronounced and the aisles fill quickly as postlude music pervades the air. The morning service is over and the rest of Sunday awaits. Kids clutching brightly-colored paper covered with their religious art excitedly hunt for parents. Teenagers, more cool, ask permission to get on with the rest of their lives, “Mom can I go to lunch with Debbie’s family?” Unless, that is, the kids in question are the pastor’s kids. Then the display of art must wait; the questions about what’s next must be put on hold. For the pastor ─ and his wife ─ are busy.

They’re shaking hands, talking to other people’s kids, congratulating the teenager who scored the winning goal on Saturday night, listening to complaints about the drums, answering questions about a book they’ve never heard of, advising about wedding details, making a note of a recent hospitalization and even, on occasion, clarifying a point made in the sermon.

If you think this is exaggerated, let me assure you I’ve been there. I remember years ago while doing my pastoral duty at the end of a service, that a long line of people was waiting to speak to me. Others pushed in to shake my hand, and I was doing my best to give “face time” to everyone. I noticed that my elder son ─ who was 12 or 13 at the time ─ was standing quietly in line along with everyone else. As his turn to speak to me arrived, he stepped forward only to be grabbed and pulled back by the person behind him who said, “You can speak to your father anytime; he’s busy now.” My son looked quite bewildered and stepped back; but I took him by the shoulder, and turning to the person in line said, “I’m afraid you’re quite wrong. He’s a pastor’s kid, which means he cannot speak to his father anytime, because his father is often so busy speaking and listening to others that his son slips through the cracks.” Then turning to my son I said, “Thanks for waiting, Dave. What’s on your mind?”

This little incident raises a number of issues concerning pastors’ kids and the congregation. Most parents never take their children to work with them. But pastors do every Sunday morning. That means that Dad is wearing two hats at the same time. His kids need to recognize that Dad is working, but Dad has to recognize that because he is working, his fatherhood has not been annulled. Compared to some of the other matters I was dealing with in the line, what was on David’s mind was not particularly substantive ─ except to him. To my son it was important; and if it was important to him, it needed to be important to me. He was right to take his place in line; he recognized I was working, and he was perfectly within his rights to interject in the affairs of Kingdom ministry a question of his Dad. And it was my job to maintain the balance and to give him his paternal face time.

But then there’s the issue of the congregation’s perceptions of the pastor’s kid ─ the person in question. Apparently in that person’s mind my son was able to find me fully available to him “at any time.” The truth of the matter is that many a pastor’s kid, having watched his father at work, has decided at best that he’ll never be a pastor and at worst that he’ll have nothing to do with the church. It’s the pastor’s job to educate his children ─ and the congregation ─ to the peculiar privileges of ministry and the concomitant demands. Pastors often work nights and weekends and holidays, and pastors’ kids need to learn it. But pastors’ kids are kids, and they need their parents. The wise pastor will find down time in his pastoral work that allows for up time with the kids. Kids and congregations alike need to know it and embrace it.

My kids enjoyed a major degree of anonymity because they grew up in a large church. They felt that they escaped the “fishbowl” syndrome that so many pastors’ kids suffer from: Always being on display, being observed, always subject to opinions occasionally voiced, not infrequently subjected to criticism, and always living with higher than normal expectations.  I taught our kids that our expectations of them were simply that they would seek to live up to their profession as followers of Jesus. I told them that some members of the congregation might expect perfection, but Jesus would not. And neither would we. When on occasion congregants would express opinions or even voice complaints about our children, my response was to evaluate the opinion or complaint in the light of what Jesus would realistically expect of a teenage disciple. Then I shared that insight with kid and complainer. It usually worked fine.

I never met a pastor’s kid who applied for the position, but I’ve met plenty who could use a little help and encouragement in living it out.