Carl a bright, sensitive son of a successful pastor, has dropped out of the mainstream of society. Although at one time he had planned to be a doctor, he never finished his last year of high school. He has literally disappeared from his parents’ lives, only surfacing for a few days every six months or so.
These visits are tense times for the entire family. Because Carl is a heavy marijuana smoker, his parents refuse to let him drive the family car. This means angry scenes with much shouting and accusations on both sides. Although they are sad when Carl again disappears, perhaps the most prominent feeling among all the family members is a deep sense of relief; now they can get on with the business of living again. After his last visit, several thousand dollars’ worth of stereo equipment and tools were missing from his parents’ home.
But however relieved they are when Carl leaves, his parents never stop grieving for him. Both his father and mother are genuinely pious people, embodying many of the Christian virtues: gentleness, patience, kindness, humility, and hospitality. Why did this happen to them?
Kristi, the daughter of prominent church leaders, has made an uneasy peace with her parents. She lives in the same city and visits them regularly, sometimes even accompanying them to worship services, but she has never made a commitment to Christ, and her lifestyle is the same as the average non-Christian’s During most of Kristi’s teen-aged years, she was openly rebelling against her parents and their values. It appeared that she attended the high school class at church merely to disrupt it. She went to drinking parties regularly and openly slept with her boyfriend. Finally she moved out of the house to set up housekeeping with him. This relationship has since been broken, and Kristi now appears to be a respectable, middle-class young woman. Her wild behavior seems to have run its course. But she has no interest in the spiritual concerns which are such an important part of her parents’ life.
Examples like these are more common than most of us would like to admit. The stereotype of the delinquent preacher’s kid or the wayward child of the Christian worker is accurate too often to be comfortably or safely ignored. In increasing numbers, these young people are rejecting their parents’ values.
Open rebellion is not the only problem More often, apathy to the Christian lifestyle afflicts the children. For each Carl or Kristi, there are probably a score of children of leaders who have never made a conscious move toward faith. They just don’t seem to care.
Jack is an example. He was brought up in a parsonage in a small, conservative community. His father was not a great preacher, but he was well-liked and respected. There were no obvious problems in the home. Neither Jack nor any of his two brothers and two sisters seemed to question the values and the faith of their parents.
But when the other young people his age were formally joining the church, Jack demurred. He didn’t yet know enough, he explained. Jack went off to a Christian college where he consistently made the dean’s list. He went on to earn a Ph.D. in philosophy and is now head of the department at an Eastern university.
Interestingly, Jack still espouses most of the values of his parents and the community in which he was raised. Although politically he would probably be considered a liberal, morally he is a conservative. A more genuinely good man would be hard to imagine; everyone likes him. He mourns the decline of the Puritan work ethic, but he empathizes with the poor. He lives in the inner city and coaches a team of boys who are culturally disadvantaged. He still subscribes to and enjoys the weekly magazine of the denomination in which he was raised. Jack is trying to give his children the Christian values and ethic which he was taught. But he himself has never made a commitment to Christ, and he openly admits he is farther than ever from becoming a Christian.
Becky is another child brought up in a strongly Christian home who has not taken the faith of her parents for her own. But it would not be fair to say she doesn’t seem to care. She cares a lot. She once admitted, while crying so hard she could hardly speak, that she wished with all her heart she could believe the way her parents do. But she can’t. She can’t summon up faith by sheer force of will.
Becky, like Jack, was a brilliant student who spent a lot of time thinking about the meaning of life. She attended a Christian college and felt very guilty because most of her classmates assumed she was a Christian. Now, fifteen years later, she is no closer to faith, although she is still hoping that somehow she will be able to believe.
The Double Standard
In addition to the normal difficulties of growing up, there are a number of unique problems facing the children of Christian leaders which can make their childhood and adolescence difficult. These problems are not insoluble, but we do need to keep them in mind in the day-to-day dealings with our children. We can become so involved in our own struggles and decisions that we tend to overlook, or at least minimize, our children’s problems.
Probably the most important problem facing the children of pastors and Christian leaders is the double standard for their behavior. In my interviews with parents I heard comments such as, “They are expected to be better than the other kids,” or “The teachers expect them to know all the answers.” If any young people are ever asked to volunteer their services in any way, the pastor’s child will be first on the list of those to be called.
It isn’t only adults who put that kind of pressure on them. Their own peers are just as guilty, particularly those within the church community. One of our daughters used to complain that the president of the youth group would never begin the meeting until she was there, even though she wasn’t an officer. So even though she was usually on time, attention was called to the times when she was late. She resented this, because anyone else could slip in unnoticed. I’m sure the leader was not trying to embarrass her. He just felt more comfortable when she was there to help the discussion. But my explaining that to her didn’t make her feel any better. Young people as well as adults tend to think that ministers’ kids should behave better, take more responsibility, and be-if not more spiritual-at least more knowledgeable about spiritual matters than other children.
Unfortunately, even pastors and leaders and their spouses often put undue pressure on their children. They themselves are under pressure to perform, to be superspiritual, and to give leadership, and they pass these same pressures on to their children by extension. They consider their families to be part of themselves, and so, sometimes consciously, sometimes unconsciously, they demand that their children measure up to the same standard they are trying to meet. One mother explained, “You want to please the congregation, and since you think they expect your children to perform in a certain way, you put pressure on them to do so, often without realizing it.” As another mother put it, “There have been times when the kids had a bit of the feeling that their folks were more concerned about their image than they were about them.” Parents must be careful to avoid burdening their children with the admonition to do or not do a certain thing because of “what people will think.”
Negative Expectations
In certain communities or congregations, the leaders’ children may be in another kind of double bind. On the one hand, they’re expected to act somewhat better than other children; on the other hand, there is the often widely believed myth that leaders’ kids tend to be unruly, hard to handle, and rebellious. Within the framework of this mindset, any time a leader’s child fails in any way, those labels are applied to him. It’s a kind of “heads you win, tails I lose” situation.
Moves
The frequent moves which pastors and other church staff often have to make can take their toll on their children. My husband recently accepted a call which meant our moving all the way across the country. Since we had been in our previous church twelve years, our twelve-year-old had never known another home. When we began to consider different positions in different parts of the country, it all sounded very exciting to her. A move would be great-the farther the better. Since we had lived in the Northwest, she thought a move to the East Coast would be terrific. However, when it actually came time to move, even though it wasn’t quite that far, she began to have second thoughts. She seemed to be doing fine; she was cheerful throughout the move and settling in the new house and school.
The first clue I had that things might not be as they appeared was a week or two later when I helped her hang her mirror. She insisted on having each piece of furniture exactly the way it had been in her previous room. When I asked why, she answered that she had read in a magazine article that this was one way to minimize the trauma of a move. I found it rather poignant that this child, who was only beginning to emerge from little girlhood, was matter-of-factly setting about to “minimize her trauma.” Although this child has never had problems academically or socially, for a child who does have difficulties in either of these areas, a move could be a shattering experience. Even though parents have their own traumas to deal with, they should be aware of what their children are going through in a move. They need extra understanding and support during this time.
One of the results of constant moving is that a child grows up feeling he or she has no real home. He grows up geographically rootless just as surely as does the child of migrant workers. When he’s at college, for instance, and someone asks him where he’s from, he is at a loss for an answer. He will probably name the city in which his parents are currently ministering, for lack of a more accurate response.
But his parents may be the only people in that place whom he knows to any degree of intimacy. So is it home? When he comes for visits during school vacations, he has no friends, relatives, or even acquaintances to look up. It is home in the crucial sense that Robert Frost described when he said that “Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in.” However, simply having his two parents there doesn’t qualify a place to be home for a young adult.
What can be done to help minimize these problems children of church leaders face? Although there are no cut-and-dried solutions that guarantee success, there are several things that can help reduce some of the conflicts.
Love Never Fails
Our children must know that our love for them is forever, whenever, and with no strings attached. Although we are expecting them to live the kind of lives God wants them to live, they must know that if they should fail, we would still accept them. Unconditionally. This is something that should be put into words so your children have no doubt about it. You know you will always love them, but you must be sure your children fully understand this.
When one of our daughters was quite young, she used to worry about this. She has always had a high consciousness of her own sin, and she was afraid she might someday go to jail for something she would do. We explained to her that if she possibly did anything that would put her in jail, she would still be our daughter, and we would love her and accept her just as much as if it had never happened. We told her that just as God never stops loving us no matter what we do, we would never stop loving her either. I told her I would feel terrible and cry a lot, but that I would come to visit her in jail just as I would if she were in the hospital. With a big smile she said, “You would?” That was the assurance she needed. She never brought up the subject of going to jail again.
Unconditional love gives children a tremendous security. It also frees them. They don’t have to test us with far-out behavior to see whether we will still accept them. Although this is important for all parents, it’s more so for church leaders. Our children live daily with the realization that their bad behavior has potential for threatening the effectiveness of our ministry. If they feel our ministry may be more important to us than their welfare or even their feelings, they may yield to the temptation to act in some socially unacceptable way to force our hand. And if they so much as sense the possibility that we are putting pressure on them in order to protect our reputation or standing in the community, they have found our Achilles’ heel.
Yet, if they do wound us in this way by some form of delinquent behavior, the consequences are equally as devastating for them as for us. They pay by facing the direct consequences of their particular sin, whether these consequences be a loss of school credits, a police record, or personal injury. In addition, they must cope with their own loss of reputation, which they probably feel more keenly than young people who are less visible publicly, and they must deal with their guilt for having possibly sabotaged our ministry.
Admitting Weaknesses
All parents have a responsibility to be consistent in their Christian walk so their public image is not markedly different from their at-home personalities. Children are quick to spot hypocrisy in their parents or other adults. Pastors and others in leadership need to be especially aware of this because their children live with the realization that their parents are regarded by many people with admiration, respect, and perhaps even awe. When a parent’s public image is seriously out of line with his private family life, he is bound to fail with his children.
Pastor T. is an example. His credentials are very good, and he is the pastor of a large congregation. But his daughter, a student at a well-known Christian college, is struggling to keep up with her course work while at the same time trying to resolve her emotional problems. It took a lot of time and gentle probing before her counselor found the root of her difficulties: her hatred of her father because of the way he continued to mistreat her mother.
Jackie is another example of a leader who lacked integrity. As a noted speaker, she would exhort women to live their lives according to biblical principles. She was able to help many of the women who heard her, and was very specific about things mothers should be doing with their children- things she herself did not do. It was hardly surprising that, one by one, her children left the church.
However, most of the pastors, Christian leaders, and their spouses whom I have known and interviewed are dedicated, spiritual people who are growing in their faith. Often they manage to rise above their circumstances in serving Christ, even when the difficulties seem almost insurmountable. They aren’t perfect, they are honest about their weaknesses, and their children aren’t turned off by their sins. The children don’t expect perfection in their parents. They understand their parents’ struggles because they are sharing them.
Love Time
Each child needs time with each parent alone on a regular basis. This is not easy for busy parents to accomplish. Pastors are busy, but they have the advantage of setting their own schedules. They should make it a priority to schedule certain times with each child. If the parsonage is adjacent to the church, the pastor can encourage the children to visit the church study after school or whenever they want advice. Although I favor parsonages a little distance from the church, I realize that for our older children in their growing up, the availability of their father has been a plus factor, particularly during their high school years. They would often greet me and give me a rundown on the excitement of the day, and then dash next door to tell their father about it. When they were grappling with serious problems or decisions, they often spent more time in his study than in my kitchen.
Although emergencies can and do cut in on family time occasionally, this must never be allowed to become the norm. A situation in which a child feels he must compete with God and the church for his parents’ time and attention is a potentially explosive situation. It is difficult for a child to find God’s will for his life when he is resenting God for taking his parents’ attention from him.
Bill Bright, the founder and president of Campus Crusade for Christ, tells his audience that when his children were small they always had access to him. No matter what important visitor might be in his office at the moment, the boys were always allowed in. Dr. Bright wanted them to know that their concerns took precedence over any other problems that he might be dealing with. He did not want them to feel they had to make an appointment to see their father.
Spiritual Interchange
Our children need to know what is going on in our spiritual lives; our victories and our failures. They can become our prayer partners while they are still quite young. Some things are beyond them, but many can be shared in prayer. When children share spiritual struggles, they will know where we are vulnerable. They will see our weaknesses and our sins, all the small and not-so-small failures that make up the walk of anyone who is serious about following Christ. But because they are spiritually involved with us, our inconsistencies won’t be a stumbling block for them. It is much harder to be put off by your parents’ sins when you are helping them pray to overcome them.
In the same way, our spiritual victories will not be inflated out of proportion. They will be seen as answers to prayer, which can be achieved by anyone who is serious about trusting God to use him. When my daughters see that someone has been helped to find the solution to a serious problem by my counsel, or has been introduced to Christ through my efforts, they are pleased, but not unduly impressed.
Inner-Directed Children
Just as parents look for God’s will in their lives, they must teach their children to live in the same way. Teaching children to look for God’s will in their lives results in their becoming what sociologist David Riesman calls “inner-directed.” They are able to act on the basis of the strength God gives them, to do what they know is right instead of bowing to pressure from their peers.
This was shown to me very graphically when our oldest daughter was in the third grade. One of her classmates had accidentally burned his house down. Both of his parents worked during the day, and he would come home to an empty house. One day he started playing with a cigarette lighter, and the house caught fire. After that, everyone at school ostracized him. They made fun of him and called him names. When he would take his lunch to a table to eat, the others would get up and move away. Our daughter came home and told me about it. She was quite upset. She explained that he was not a special friend of hers-she didn’t even like him very much-but she was concerned about the way he was being treated.
Something prompted me to ask her, “What do you think Jesus would want you to do about it?” She thought a minute and said she thought Jesus would want her to take her lunch and go sit with him. I agreed. So the next day at lunch she sat next to him, taking her little sister along for moral support. The following day a couple of others joined them. By the end of the week he was completely integrated into the group again. This was an amazing incident for me to observe. A basically timid child had found the power to resist tremendous peer pressure to help someone in trouble, even at the risk of being ostracized herself. We have found that this method has several advantages. First of all, it avoids a contest of wills between parents and child, because the parents aren’t saying, “This is what we want you to do.” They aren’t even saying, “The Bible says.” They are helping the child to develop his conscience and to learn to make his decisions on the basis of his growing knowledge of God and faith in him.
Our Goals Must Be Big Enough
In addition to the Carls and Kristis who are openly rebelling, there are a great number of children of leaders who are deeply alienated from their parents, even though they accept their parents’ basic values. Shelley is an example. She loves her parents, accepts the doctrines of the church, and intellectually affirms her parents’ morals. She respects her father’s ministry. Occasionally she helps him with typing or distributing flyers to the community.
But Shelley is living a double life. Her parents do not suspect that she smokes, drinks, occasionally dabbles in pot, and attends parties with a group of friends who are considered the fast crowd in her high school. Shelley agonizes about this. She is not happy with this part of her life or with her deception. But she is unable to break away.
One reason for the alienation of children is that our goals for them are not big enough. A great many Christian leaders hope and pray that their children will be converted, that they will join the church, and that they will live good moral lives. We all desire these things for our children. So what is the problem?
The problem is that since these goals aren’t big enough to inspire our children-to give them a vision-there is a good possibility that even these goals won’t be achieved in their lives. The writer of Proverbs said that without a vision the people perish. That goes double for young people who still have the idealism they may lose in later life. One sixteen-year-old daughter of a pastor cried out to him in despair, “What’s it all about? You got married and had us, and we’ll get married and have kids, but what’s it all good for?”
Since we are actively involved in ministry, we are uniquely qualified to equip our children for ministry. And our children have special potential; their religious education is probably well above average, and because they are constantly meeting people, they are likely to be quite at ease in conversation as well. But our children will not become involved in ministry, in its widest sense, just by virtue of being our children and watching us, any more than people become Christians merely by watching Christians. There are specific ways in which our children must be encouraged if this is to happen.
Developing Spiritual Gifts
A beautiful result of teaching children to minister while they are very young is that they will begin finding and developing their spiritual gifts while they are young. We know from Scripture that all Christians have at least one spiritual gift. But it is a sad fact that many adult Christians don’t know which gift or gifts they may have. One way to discover our gifts is by trying different areas of service. There is no way a person can discover he has a gift for teaching if he has never tried to teach a class. How can I say I don’t have the gift of evangelism if I have never tried to explain the plan of salvation to a non-Christian? It is only by trying different aspects of ministry for a length of time that we can discover which gifts we have.
When children are challenged very early to begin watching for needy people to befriend, delinquents to challenge, and lost souls to tell about Jesus, they begin to develop gifts of mercy, exhortation, evangelism, and teaching. I have known young people of thirteen and fourteen in whom these gifts were already clearly evident. One young person I know had led several of her classmates to Christ by the time she was fifteen and was discipling them in a weekly Bible study class. I also know a young man who had an obvious gift of exhortation by the age of sixteen. His peers would come to him with their problems, and he would give them the Word from the Lord. He gave them godly counsel because he knew the Scriptures.
A twelve-year-old friend of mine, whose parents have raised her according to the principles of ministry, uses her social position to meet the needs of her peers who are not as favored. Recently she told her mother about a party she had attended. During the games the popular boys were continually choosing her and her pretty friends for partners. The hostess, who was not pretty or socially knowledgeable, was being neglected. My friend noticed this, and cornered two of the most attractive boys. She told them they had a responsibility to pay attention to the hostess. After all, they had accepted her hospitality. “We can take care of ourselves,” she said, “you go pay attention to her.” And they did. This same girl has on occasion intervened on the school playground when she has seen an older child bullying a young one. Once after such an incident, the little child whom she had befriended pushed a note into her hand the next day to thank her.
The father of a seventh-grader told me that his daughter is already taking responsibility for giving direction to her peers. Recently she was at a party where several couples paired up and did some hugging and kissing. Afterward, she confronted one of the girls who was her best friend. She asked why she had acted that way when she knew her parents would not approve. The girl said, “I couldn’t help it. I was just sitting there, and all of a sudden John was kissing me. What could I do?” Her friend replied, “Well, in a couple of years you will be pregnant and you’ll say ‘What could I do?’ ” The girl did a little squirming, but she listened, and agreed she would have to change her behavior. This is exhortation on a level which many adults would envy.
Giving your children your values and helping them develop their spiritual gifts does not preclude difficulties, of course. Any family struggling to minister together will have its share of raised voices and even bitter tragedy. Life is complex and full of enigmas. Despite our best efforts, we may find ourselves in a deep valley of anguish where our only succor is God. And we must remember that raising our children according to spiritual principles does not ensure salvation. Salvation is a gift of God’s grace, not the result of correct child-rearing techniques.
Still, raising children in a loving Christian atmosphere and sharing our spiritual goals with them is our responsibility, and it gives them the best chance to adopt our Christian values. The important thing is that when we and our children share values and goals, our energies will not be diverted to trying to achieve reconciliation between our children and ourselves. Instead, we can be working side by side to do Christ’s work of reconciliation and healing in a wounded world.
Copyright © 1981 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal. Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.
