You Can’t Save a Pastor’s Kid

I don’t remember her exact words, but I remember where I was when she said them.

I was around eight years old, standing in the church nursery getting into costume for our church’s annual dinner theater. The mom of one of the other girls in the program turned to me, and in front of all my peers, loudly blurted out: “So you’re the pastor’s kid, huh?! I guess that means you’ll be a rebel one day!” she laughed. I smiled, trying to laugh with her, trying to indicate that I was in on the joke that I knew wasn’t really a joke. That’s a big part of being a pastor’s kid (PK): being pleasant, laughing at the joke, smiling, not snapping — being a good kid. Even at the age of eight, I was already learning how to handle public and brash condescension and speculation. Dealing with assumptions about my future, my family’s at-home culture, and our beliefs was a part of being a PK. I was already learning how to wear my costume.

I wouldn’t go so far as to say I was bullied for being a pastor’s kid, but it did feel like it created a noticeable amount of social friction. One time in high school, a classmate had a moment of mean-spiritedness towards me and yelled on the bus that she thought my dad was bad at preaching. Another time, a teacher discovered a dropped note on the ground and held it up in front of the class to figure out who drew it; it was a picture of a curly-haired girl dressed in a nun’s habit with the title “The Virgin Grace.” I remember making eye contact with the girl who I knew drew it and mouthing, “It’s okay!!” In class, male peers sitting near me would share over-the-top vulgar stories to try to get me to snap at them; sometimes it worked.

In some ways, being a PK felt like I was wearing a costume I could never take off. While this usually didn’t bother me, sometimes the material I had to work with would get quite scratchy. I wondered what it would be like to wear a different outfit. While I never really had a desire to “rebel,” I can completely understand why and how a pastor’s child would or eventually does move away from a formal faith. Growing up, it can feel like people around you are waiting for you to mess up, misstep, snap, swear, to catch you not-being-good. Fortunately, I never felt that pressure coming from my parents, but I imagine that if I did, I would be extremely cynical, skeptical, and disillusioned about the church, the gospel, Jesus — all of it.

So what kept me from snapping? Was it something my parents did? Didn’t do? What’s the secret to raising pastors’ kids to have their own faith, to value the church, to maintain relationships with their family, to not resent it all? I certainly have some ideas, but I’m not sure there’s a one-size-fits-all approach. Unfortunately, or maybe fortunately, depending on what you were hoping to get out of this essay, I think it all comes back to grace and mercy.

Grace and mercy are — to borrow an image from Wendell Berry’s Hannah Coulter — the golden thread. You can do everything “right” as a parent, as a pastor, as a congregant, and relationships will still suffer; faith will falter even under the healthiest of circumstances because we live in a fallen world full of fallen people. By all means, listen to practical advice and take it to heart, but please remember that in this situation and others, we do not have the power to hold things together; only God does. God’s love, God’s mercy, God’s grace is the golden thread.

That Berry passage now:

I began to know my story then. Like everybody’s, it was going to be the story of living in the absence of the dead. What is the thread that holds it all together? Grief, I thought for a while. And grief is there sure enough, just about all the way through. From the time I was a girl I have never been far from it. But grief is not a force and has no power to hold. You only bear it. Love is what carries you, for it is always there, even in the dark, or most in the dark, but shining out at times like gold stitches in a piece of embroidery. (p. 51)

My dad “retired” from the pastorate a few years ago. I put retired in quotes because I’m not sure a pastor ever really retires. He is still filling in on Sundays for churches who are in between pastors, for churches who are too poor to pay a pastor, for churches who are dying but still need and want a pastor. He is still reading, writing, praying. But there are fewer meetings, fewer hospital visits, fewer calls late at night, fewer ironed shirts.

In some ways, it felt like a relief to have my dad retire. It is a strange way to make a living and to live a life, being a pastor. It’s also a strange way to grow up. You watch your parent help people at their most vulnerable but are aware that the pastorate is a place they can never been fully vulnerable themself. Family weekends always feel a bit weighty with the expectations of Sunday looming over Saturday night, even when things are going well at the church. While it was my dad that accepted the call to be a shepherd to a group of people who are suffering, searching, and seeking, I couldn’t always be shielded from the collateral, cutting criticisms of disgruntled church members. As the family member of a pastor, you understand the call that person has taken on, but sometimes you wish it could be someone else’s burden instead. It’s a holy privilege, but a heavy one, too. I guess that’s why I say it felt like a relief for my dad to retire.

The older I get, the more I realize how much a pastor’s calling involves and influences their whole family’s calling, too. While this isn’t always a bad thing, it can be quite a challenging and confusing thing, especially for a child. Many parents who are in ministry seem to worry that their children will grow to resent them. Frankly, it’s a real possibility and something that most pastors will have to navigate. I’ve had quite a few conversations with pastors who earnestly and anxiously ask me how I kept the faith and how they could help their kids, too. I get these questions. I really do. Parents really don’t want to mess up their kids and want them to be happy, healthy, whole individuals. But the reality is that pastors’ kids are people, and people are not always predictable or persuadable; sometimes bitterness spreads through the body before you even realize it was there, quietly festering, at all.

So what do you do? Is there actually a secret? My answer is incredibly basic and incredibly risky, and I’ve already touched on it above, but the secret is this: love. Berry again:

Love is what carries you, for it is always there, even in the dark, or most in the dark, but shining out at times like gold stitches in a piece of embroidery. (p. 51)

I believe that the best thing you (pastor or not) can do for your child and their faith is to recognize that no amount of intentionally crafted catechizing will help form them into people who love Christ as much as simple presence with a loving parent will. I literally grew up on and in church property, and my most formative faith moments all existed in liminal spaces where I could let my guard down and work out curiosity and confusion without feeling shamed that I didn’t have a “good” answer. It’s good if your kid has access to good tools, truths, theology, and teachers, but please realize that car rides, walks after dinner, simple vacations away, a game of catch at dusk are better than almost anything else for forming trust.

Trust really matters, because at some point the broken people of the church will break a person’s trust. From there, it’s an incredibly easy jump to no longer trust in God. In these moments, a pastor’s kid needs a trusted parent and/or Christian adult to confide in. Disillusionment, disappointment, deconstruction, and even disavowal in one’s child because of a bad experience with the church are intimidating emotions to face as a pastor. However, in these moments, I think it’s important to remember that you’re a parent first. Being able to talk through these challenges with an honest and humble posture, profession and calling aside, is an incredibly helpful and important practice and can be a very healthy step in cultivating a child or teen’s faith into something that is independent, resilient, and authentic. Don’t focus on fixing your child; focus on listening to and loving them.

***

In the end, I don’t believe I became or stayed a Christian because my dad was a good pastor at a good church with good theology. Sure, that certainly helped. But even the best pastors and parents cannot protect their kids from the damaging forces that people in the church can inflict upon others. More than anything else, I think that I became and stayed a Christian because my parents reminded me and showed me that they loved me whether I was “good” or not. And in turn, their love revealed something about God — something that compelled me to want faith for myself, to believe that the church was worth being a part of, that disagreements about theology and worship music and beliefs on baptism were not the main thing; Jesus was. And Jesus … well … he loves me just as I am.

If you are a parent who is feeling any sort of shame that you’ve “messed up” your child as you seek to raise them in the church, I invite you to consider what Eugene Peterson writes in The Jesus Way:

Real life, the real world, is a vast theater of salvation, directed by our wise and totally involved God.

When the curtain falls, everything is grace and mercy, grace and mercy, grace and mercy. Being a loving parent — and a parent who plays a part in helping their child to follow Christ for themself — means being a person of grace and mercy too. Grace and mercy are risky, and there are no guarantees that extending them will “succeed” at helping your child stay in the church. There are stories of heartache and heartbreak that I don’t have an easy explanation for. It is very hard. However, grace and mercy are the way of Jesus, and I believe so deeply in my spirit that they are always what compels us to come home. Real life is a real challenge, but remember that God is totally involved, and his love is vast enough to cover you, your child, this whole world.

And that’s good news.