“Barbara, you didn’t have your eyes closed when we were praying. And you’re the pastor’s daughter!” boomed the Sunday school teacher in front of the entire primary department.
How did she know, our oldest child wondered, unless her eyes were open too?
We recently asked Barbara and her two sisters-all of them now married-what they most liked and disliked about growing up in a pastor’s family. They talked about the enjoyment of meeting Christian leaders who came to our home. They cited the greater opportunities to travel, the fun of being the “speaker’s family” at various conferences and camps. They appreciated their insider’s perspective-seeing Mom and Dad in ministry yet also being real people who got discouraged, angry, and needed forgiveness like anyone else.
But our daughters weren’t wild about being expected to bail out teachers or youth leaders stumped by theological questions. More than once they found an adult turning their way to ask, “What do you think? Why did God send Abraham to Israel instead of India?”
For many in a church, the pastor’s family is a peculiar people, more holy than normal, and thus assumed to be uninterested in ordinary human life. Our girls sometimes found out they weren’t invited to friends’ parties because “we know you’re a minister’s daughter and can’t come.” One woman apologized to me (Sally) years later for not including me at Tupperware or Avon parties “because we thought you wouldn’t like what we talked about.”
Three pressurizers
Expectations descend upon pastoral families from three directions:
1. The community in general. Leaders in any field are subjected to more scrutiny and higher demands. Why don’t the news reporters leave Princess Di alone? Because all of Great Britain (and beyond) thinks it owns the royal couple. Many people vicariously live out the fairy tale. Others feel it is their right to know every move Charles and Diana make, since they’re supported with public money.
Some of the same dynamics occur with church leaders and their families. High visibility and responsibility in the community brings with it high expectations.
2. The church. Parishioners react much the same as the general community-but pile on the spiritual dimension as well. Church members almost tacitly agree that while they cannot be expected to have it all together spiritually, certainly the pastor and his family will do so. They are, after all, the visible incarnation of God in their midst.
But at the same time, there’s an undercurrent that says, I bet they’re just as frail as the rest of us. When one of our daughters was in a time of rapid spiritual growth, she would stand almost every Sunday evening to share something God had been teaching her. A woman eventually said to her, “Well, we can always count on you to have something to say in the sharing time. Your dad must put you up to it.”
On the other hand, Becki remembers an argument in school when a classmate challenged her to back up her point of view with a Scripture. Becki couldn’t.
“You’re a preacher’s daughter,” the girl sneered, “and you can’t even quote the Bible!”
“Well, your dad is a plumber,” Becki retorted, “and you don’t know how to fix pipes!”
3. The pastoral family itself. In the same way Princess Di walks one step behind Prince Charles as a self-imposed protocol, so the pastor’s family often legislates unnecessary limitations for itself. Pastors are perhaps the most guilty for setting up standards that in the end strangle everyone in the home.
Our first church after seminary was in a small town where a number of our families were farmers. I (Jim) decided we needed to be up and going when the farmers started their day. At least I wanted the light on in my study before dawn.
But the church also had businessmen who worked into the evening hours. So it was necessary, I felt, to please them by serving late at night with various business meetings, speaking engagements, and visitation appointments.
One day, our preschool daughter said to Sally, “I hate the church, because it takes my daddy away from me.” When I heard that, it was like being stabbed. I was sacrificing my family to make the church happy with me.
The pastor who preaches on the disaster of divorce and the necessity of family solidarity while at the same time working 70-100 hours a week and setting unrealistic expectations for his family is a walking tragedy.
The positive parsonage
Among the things that make for happier pastoral families are these:
Communicate! Talk about each person’s gifts in the family and how those might be developed for the church at large, not necessarily this local church.
It is true that Scripture requires a pastor to be “one that ruleth well his own house” (1 Tim. 3:4). But ruling is not dictating. Ruling is leading. A leader is a facilitator who helps people achieve and develop. This will happen most effectively by open, honest communication.
Don’t live for the church alone. Yes, God is involved in the church, but the church is not God. He is eternal and transcultural. So sell your soul to him but not to the congregation.
Deliberately develop hobbies and friendships outside the local church. We have found other professionals, such as doctors and business people as well as pastors and laity from other churches, to be good stimulators for us. They remind us of what God is doing in the larger world.
Expose your family to other values. Virginia Satir in People-Making says one indication of a sick family is that they view themselves as a cloister of purity, isolated from the evil world around them. They develop a fortress mentality.
Every pastor needs a good atheist friend to challenge him. The pastor’s family needs to be exposed to other systems of thought and lifestyle. Some PKs go from a Christian grade school to a Christian high school to a Christian college to a seminary and then to preach or teach in a Christian institution. They are never seriously in touch with the alien society around them.
Teach children spiritual values that are personal. You can tell a child, “We don’t drink because we’re Christians, the Bible says no, and besides-we’re the pastoral family.” None of those are going to be effective, however, when peers suggest drinking.
Instead, discuss the world’s values and help the child form his or her own. One of our daughters used to say when confronted with alcohol, “I’ve come up with ten reasons why I don’t drink. The first is that it’s fattening. … ” (Further down her list were reasons more “spiritual”!)
Family discussions about such issues need to start at least two years before children are confronted with the real thing. “Sometime down the road, kids are going to ask you what you believe about _______. Let’s talk about it now.” Such conversations are far more fruitful than imposing expectations based on church roles.
Love each other! Author John Powell records that he was in the hospital room when his father died. His mother put her arms around John and said, “He loved you so much. He was so proud of you.” John went to a corner of the room and quietly sobbed.
When a nurse came to comfort him, he said, “I’m not crying because my father died. I’m crying because he never told me he loved me.”
Telling our family members we love them is a way to help them grow and become more confident. It also increases our love for them. God has called us not only to preach and pray and organize but also to love, thereby setting spouses and children free from expectations that bind. If the family is sacrificed for public ministry, we will ultimately lose both.
-Jim and Sally Conway
Fullerton, California
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