How to Save a Pastor’s Kid

The most challenging requirement to being an elder is that your kids need to be faithful and well-behaved. Your kids are simultaneously their own people, with their own wills and personal faith, and part of your resumé, open to evaluation by your church. The requirement is then difficult on two fronts: you are being evaluated based on someone else’s character and behavior and the church has a legitimate interest in observing your kids.

I didn’t grow up as a pastor’s kid; in fact, as far as I can tell, I’m the first pastor in my family going back at least 8 generations. But the reputation of pastor’s kids veers wildly from the most-straight laced, spiritual kids (who may or may not burst out of their inhibitions upon adulthood) or church-based terrors. And pastors often make the mistake of treating their kids not as their own child first, but as extensions of their ministry to the church. This looks like kids being turned into ministerial props, and their lives being put on display (sermon illustrations anyone?) with no sense of privacy and dignity fir the kid. Especially as the kids get older, the realization that they are constantly being watched and evaluated, and that their parents are holding them to a high standard precisely because of that evaluation, often leads to resentment, pressure, and rebellion. Or worse — entitlement, when the kids think they have some kind of trickle-down authority in the church because of who their parents are.

So, the very nature of the requirement that a pastor’s kids be faithful often raises the pressure that encourages unfaithfulness…