Children of the ministry are not volunteers; they are conscripts.
Doug Toussaint
My job as a parent is a temporary responsibility with eternal consequences.
Tim Kimmel
What do Alice Cooper and Cotton Mather have in common? Not much, except that both grew up as sons of ministers.
The same is true of Aaron Burr, Orville and Wilbur Wright, Walter Mondale, John Tower, Marvin Gay, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Sir Laurence Olivier. Other “preacher’s kids” include Albert Schweitzer, Christian Barnaard, and Harriet Beecher Stowe.
There’s no guarantee, of course, that any child — whether born into the home of a preacher, professor, plumber, or prince — will decide to live in a way that brings honor to God and joy to parents. Nor can pastoral couples guarantee even that their children will find church a place to enjoy rather than endure. Some factors are beyond parental control — critics, conflict — but parents can help prepare children for church life, interpret what’s happening, and create an atmosphere that makes church life much more appealing and increases the chances of the child’s developing a strong relationship with God.
Let’s look at some of the key elements in helping kids have a healthy experience in their church life. Family-conscious ministers have identified several general strategies.
Fathering or Pastoring Your Family?
The first is to recognize the difference between being a father to your family and being your family’s pastor.
When your family is part of your congregation, you’ll wind up pastoring them. As one Nazarene pastor pointed out about his children, “I’m the only pastor they’ve ever had.” Through preaching, counsel, and example, pastors provide spiritual direction for everyone in their congregations, including their families.
But there’s danger when a pastor sees his family only as objects of pastoral care and not as intimates with whom he has a qualitatively different relationship from the one he has with ordinary members of the congregation.
“I may pastor my family, but I don’t want always to be their preacher,” says a pastor from San Diego. “I struggle with dads who preach at their kids but don’t listen, who have an agenda for every conversation: Dad speaks, kids listen. I have a tendency to be like that. But I’m grateful that God gave me a wife who won’t let me. I don’t want to be the family preacher, except on Sunday.”
A pastor from Michigan says, “I don’t think of myself as my family’s pastor. I do pastor them on Sundays. But when I walk in the door at night, I don’t think of them in congregational terms. My home is my escape, a place where I don’t have to be The Pastor.”
In some ways, fathering is a much easier role, a more natural fit, one that doesn’t require us to maintain the poise and energy level of pastoring. But in other ways, it’s a more uncomfortable role.
“I can stand up in front of hundreds of people on Sunday and articulate a spiritual principle and illustrate it. People even take notes. But that afternoon, sitting with my wife and kids, it’s a lot harder. No notebooks come out!” says Joseph Stowell with a smile. “I’m not nearly as articulate or convincing. I’ve given talks to teenagers on dating, morality, and handling temptations. I tried to sit down and cover that with my kids. It didn’t work. I wondered, What’s wrong with me? I just lost the gift. That’s the difference between fathering and pastoring. Fathering is a very different role — our impact goes beyond the realm of precept. Our impact comes from our character, attitude, integrity — our caring and love for them.”
One way to make sure the preacher/authority role is occasionally shucked for the “just plain ol’ Dad” role is to capitalize on situations where we are not in charge. A minister living in New Hampshire illustrates: “My son plays soccer, and I enjoy games as a spectator. But I’ve turned down all invitations to coach or even be an assistant. Why? Because whenever Mark enters my world, he always sees me in charge. I want soccer to be one area where he is in charge, where he knows more than I do, and where he knows he knows more than I do. All I do is show an interest, ask questions, and learn from him.”
Orienting Children to the Ministry
Orientation is important in helping children handle the realities of life in a ministry home. If they are prepared, they aren’t as likely to be jolted by difficult people or situations.
Most pastors and spouses surveyed indicated they brief their children to expect people not to be perfect. But they also try to help them see the importance of ministry.
“I try to teach them that the church is not above hurts, criticism, and conflict. These are growing areas — great teaching times,” writes one pastor. “As a family, we endure the bad, enjoy the good, and grow in both. We’re teaching them to be liberal in gratitude, and to write notes of thanks and praise to encourage others. I often speak of the faithfulness of God’s people through the ages.”
“We pray as a family for hurting members,” writes another.
Yet another pastor is not quite so delicate in his choice of words: “The number one issue for me has been to let them know I love the Lord and the church he died for — and because sheep are sheep, there’s frequently lots of sheep dung to clean up. So we’re not shocked when sinners sin.”
Each of these expresses in a different way the same truth: children of ministry benefit from periodically being briefed on what to expect.
Entering Each Other’s World
Parenting books stress the importance of spending time with your children. And who would argue? But many of these books leave the impression that parents should eliminate the important and interesting activities they enjoy and bore themselves silly with coloring books and Parcheesi.
While it probably wouldn’t harm any of us to join our preschoolers with the Play-Doh or our junior highers with the video games, involvement doesn’t always have to mean descending to the level of a child in order to relate.
Preacher’s kid Tim Stafford describes his own upbringing: “My father didn’t join the neighborhood football games; we probably would have been embarrassed if he had. He never played Monopoly with us. He encouraged us in our chosen vocation of fishing, but he never bought a rod and reel himself. I always had the impression that we were kids, allowed the kiddish dignity of going about our kiddish affairs in all seriousness, without adult interference.
“I am not certain I can recommend my father’s lack of involvement in our interests, but I strongly recommend his alternative — involving us in his. He allowed us to enter his world when we were interested in doing so. He and I trekked hundreds of miles in the back country of the Sierra Nevada together, not so much (I believe) because he was being a good father but because he wanted to go. We talked baseball because he was avidly interested. He also liked taking us to meetings with him. I remember particularly one Sunday night when after the evening service, I went with my father to a hotel restaurant to join a small circle of pastors chatting with Addison Leitch, one of my father’s most admired seminary professors. I didn’t know what they were talking about, but to this day my memory can bring back the rich pleasure of being allowed in adult male company as a sort of equal.”
In some ways, the elder Stafford was showing his son the same respect he’d show for any friend — he sought common ground. Hopefully, one of those mutual interests will be ministry. This was the situation for another pastor’s son, who grew up to become a pastor himself: “I was raised in a parsonage, and my dad was never there. Most nights it seemed he had some meeting to attend. But I never resented it because he included me in his life.”
One way to begin doing this is, as some church leaders do, to grant kids an open-door policy.
Bill Bright, the founder and president of Campus Crusade for Christ, says that when his children were small they always had access to him. No matter what important visitor might be in his office, the boys were always allowed in for at least a brief greeting. Dr. Bright wanted them to know that their concerns took precedence over any other problems he might be dealing with. He did not want them to feel they had to make an appointment to see their father.
Developing a Ministry Mindset
Most pastors would love to have family members share their commitment to ministry. How can that commitment be encouraged?
One key is to teach children to do what we are trying to do — live for God’s glory and not our own. This results in their becoming what sociologist David Riesman calls “inner-directed.” They learn to act on the basis of the strength God gives, to do what they know is right, instead of bowing to pressure from their peers (or even their parents).
A pastor’s wife from Indiana offered the following example from when her daughter was in third grade. “One of her classmates had parents who both 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 and burned to the ground. After that, everyone at school made fun of him and called him ‘Lightning Bug’ or ‘Firefly.’ When he would take his lunch to a table to eat, the others would get up and move away. Our daughter 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.
“I asked, ‘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 integrated into the group again. This was an amazing incident for me to observe. A basically timid child had found the power to resist peer pressure to help someone in trouble.”
By pointing the child to God, this approach can help avoid 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 make decisions on the basis of his growing knowledge of God and faith in him. This, of course, is much different from using “God’s will” to pressure children into bowing to “parents’ will.”
One minister’s 12-year-old daughter, who had been raised with a ministry mindset, was able to use her sanctified social skills to help some of her friends at a party. During the games the popular boys were continually choosing her and her pretty friends for partners. The hostess, who was not pretty or socially skilled, was being neglected. The minister’s daughter was sensitive to 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.
These, then, are some general strategies for helping children have a healthy church experience. Now let’s turn to specific situations.
When the Children Are Young
Pastors have several techniques when their children are preschoolers or in the early elementary grades.
Bedtime briefings. Even preschoolers can benefit from briefings, if they’re handled simply and with imagination.
One church leader says that bedtime has proved the best time for this with his daughters. He explains: “Saturday night, or any night before a church event, as I’m tucking the girls in, I tell them about the good things to expect the next day — the friends they’re going to see, the things they’re going to do. And I’ll try to tell them what to be listening for; I give them a foretaste of any lesson or sermon they’ll be hearing. If I know the Sunday school lesson, for instance, I’ll tell the Bible story. My girls like that because (1) they feel more confident the next day when they hear the story, and (2) I throw in more detail than their teachers usually do. Our daughters especially like to know names for each of the characters.
“Once, for instance, my 3-year-old’s teacher was telling the story of Jesus’ healing the blind man. Stacey was eager to tell the class, ‘His name was Bartimaeus!’ a detail the teacher had somehow managed to overlook. Right now, our daughter is troubled because she knows the names of Noah’s sons — Ham, Shem, and Japheth — but I can’t tell her the names of the sons’ wives who were on the ark, and her inquiring mind wants to know! But I’m glad to supply her with little details. I like to fire her imagination for the next day’s activity.”
Church as second home. Because they’re at the church so often, children will naturally begin to see it as their second home. A number of pastors have tried to use this fact to their advantage.
“As our children were growing up, we tried to let them see the privileges that go along with the pastorate,” said Kent Hughes. “For example, they got the run of the church building during the week — gymnasium and all.”
Jamie Buckingham, now pastoring in Florida, said that when his kids were small, “we wanted them to feel the church was an extension of their house, so they were welcome in the office — and occasionally during worship one of them would come up on the platform and stand with me during the congregational singing. I allowed that because it didn’t disrupt our worship, and it helped reinforce that the church was their place, too.”
Warm associations. Many pastors try to make sure their kids associate church with positive feelings. Part of this comes naturally through friends, caring teachers, and the positive perspective of parents. But at least one pastor did even more.
“I’ve always sat on the front row with my family during worship services, not up on the platform,” wrote this pastor. “I go to the pulpit only when I have a specific task to perform. Otherwise I’ve always been sitting there stroking my children’s hair, scratching the back of their necks, kneading their shoulders — and they never wiggled a muscle for fear I would stop. We never had a behavior problem in church with either of them. Now that they’re older, they simply would not miss a church service — and I’ve pondered whether their faithfulness is not built to some extent on a subconscious association with good feelings of warmth and intimacy.”
Avoiding after-service neglect. The period right after the worship service is an important time for the pastor to make contact with people. But a crowded narthex can be a confusing place for young children, especially when both parents are concentrating on greeting worshipers.
One pastor’s daughter told about trying to talk to her father in the foyer after the Sunday morning service. She shouted, “Dad, Dad,” but she couldn’t get his attention. Finally she said, “Pastor!” and got his immediate attention. Understandably, she felt her father was more interested in others than in her.
“I know that my children will superimpose the image of their father, to some degree, upon their understanding of God,” says David Goodman, pastor of Winnetka (Illinois) Bible Church. “Most kids do. I don’t want my kids seeing God as one who is interested only in others and not in them. At the same time, the time in the foyer after a Sunday service is crucial ministry time.”
So he has devised an arrangement. “We get someone, usually one of the single women, to get our two youngest kids from their classrooms and watch them for the forty-five minutes right after church while we’re busy. We pay her, and sometimes she takes them to the park across the street, or, if the weather is bad, she plays with them in a room in the church.
“We don’t need child care for our 10-year-old; she’s seeing her friends and talking to other people. (I think one of the advantages for kids growing up in a church home is that they tend to be well socialized; they get more interaction with adults.) But for the two younger ones, we had to get child care because otherwise they get into mischief. After all, they’ve been in church two to three hours already, and if we’re too harsh on them, they begin to resent the whole experience. That’s the last thing we want. We want them to enjoy going to church as we enjoy going to church.”
When Children Are Older
In the later elementary-school years and beyond, strategies change. Here are some methods used by ministry parents who have preteens and adolescents.
The first and most common is to involve the children in various aspects of the ministry. One way is to pay them for office work. “I’ll often bring one of my kids to the church when he or she needs to earn a little money,” said John Yates of The Falls Church in northern Virginia. “There’s always some filing or sweeping that needs to be done, and I pay them out of my pocket.
“My dad was in the department store business when I was young. I started working there when I was 12, and he’d pay me out of his pocket. It made me feel special that my dad was in charge of this organization, and that I could work there, too. And the employees loved Dad’s children. Well, I see that same kind of feeling among the children here. This is a happy church, and my kids feel loved when they come here to work.”
Another way to involve children is to take them along on certain kinds of visitation. Hank Simon of Signal Hill Lutheran Church near St. Louis, Missouri, takes his 10-year-old along every time he visits Mrs. Keller, a long-time member of the church who is a shut-in. And over the years Christy has grown very close to “her shut-in.” Mrs. Keller often has little treats for Christy. For instance, when Christy took her an Easter basket, Mrs. Keller had some chocolate-covered peanuts for her.
“Christy is learning that caring is part of the Christian life,” says Mary Simon, Christy’s mom. “Now she’s worried because the woman’s cat is more than 14 years old. Recently she asked me, ‘What will Mrs. Keller do when her cat dies?’ I was touched that a 10-year-old could care so deeply for her elderly friend.”
Another time, Mary Simon remembers, Christy stood on the footrest of a wheelchair so one of the blind people could feel her face. Finally the woman said, “Thank you. I’m so glad to see you.”
“Our daughters remember visiting the 101-year-old lady in the nursing home — and going to a funeral of a young child,” said Mary. “By being involved in ministry this way, they have developed a good sense of life’s stages.”
John Yates took his 11-year-old son to a dinner where John was to be the speaker. “They invited my wife and me, but Susan was busy that night, so I asked if I could bring my son. The hosts agreed. Well, you might think he would have been bored stiff at a formal dinner with a bunch of old people. But he wasn’t. Afterward he said, ‘Dad, that was a great talk.’ And he even enjoyed talking with some of the people. Later one of the older ladies wrote him a letter and sent him a gift — a Bible. It turned out to be a great experience for both of us.”
Yet another strategy is occasionally to single out children for special treatment. A number of pastors’ kids recall their parents doing something especially for them, even amid the busyness of ministry. This event often made a profound and lasting mark on their attitudes toward ministry.
Richard Strauss remembers: “When I was about 5, my dad had a portrait taken of just him and me with our arms around each other, and he wrote across that portrait, Pals. He hung it in his study. I used to go in when he wasn’t there and just stand and look at that picture. It meant more to me at that age than anything in life. In fact, I’ve got it at home now.”
At times, pastors’ kids seem to need an occasional reminder that they’re “more special” than the members of the congregation. One of the best reminders: periodically spending time one-on-one. Sometimes this requires firm resolve. One pastor, who was also the son of a pastor, recalled a key moment in his upbringing.
“In addition to pastoring, my dad worked a second job, 3-11 p.m. five nights a week, to support our family. But about once every other month, he would do something one-on-one with each of us kids. One Saturday morning, it was my turn, and Dad and I were getting ready to go hunting.”
Suddenly a car pulled in front of the house. It was Wilbur Enburg, one of the elders, and he wanted the pastor to come with him.
“It’s Joe and Laura,” Wilbur said. “They’re upset and say they’re going to leave the church. I think you should go see them.”
“I talked with Joe last week, and with Laura the week before that,” the pastor said. “The situation can wait.”
Wilbur wasn’t happy. “I think you should see them today.”
“Sorry,” said the pastor as his son watched silently. “I’m going hunting today.”
Wilbur’s face got red. “If you go hunting, don’t bother to come back.” Then he turned to get back into his car.
“I don’t think you mean that, Wilbur,” the pastor said. “I’ll see you in church tomorrow.”
The pastor’s son reflects, “As Dad and I headed off to the woods, I had to ask, ‘Is this going to cost you your job?'”
“‘I don’t think so,’ Dad said. ‘But if it does, the job is not worth keeping.'”
Sure enough, the matter with Joe and Laura was not an emergency. They did not leave the church, and the pastor’s ministry remained intact. And the pastor’s son learned a lasting lesson: his dad considered him more important than pleasing a particular elder. That affirmation has lasted nearly forty years.
This story, however, raises another question in giving children a healthy church experience: How to handle the conflicts and difficult people that arise in any church? How do these affect the children?
The Critical and the Contentious
When difficulties arise in church life, parents face the challenge of explaining to the kids what’s happening without souring the children’s attitudes toward the church. The approaches will differ depending on the ages and maturity levels of the children, of course, but some of the key principles remain constant.
Most pastoral families try to shield their children, especially in their younger years, from exposure to the criticisms and conflicts of church life.
“We don’t want to poison their attitudes toward the church or toward any individual,” said one minister’s spouse. “So we don’t roast the congregation at the dinner table. We try to focus on the positive things happening in the church.”
Of course, there will be times when children will eavesdrop on conversations, or, when a critic phones you at home, they’ll overhear your side of the conversation. They may sense your discomfort or hear you desperately trying to phrase an appropriate response. Then, after you’ve hung up the phone, what do you say?
“After I’ve been discussing a church problem on the phone,” said a California pastor, “often our young children will ask me, ‘Who was that on the phone?’ I’ll say, ‘Someone from church,’ and if they press for details, I’ll simply tell them, ‘It’s not your conversation.'”
As children get older, however, and begin answering the phone themselves, they’ll know who the other person is, and when they sense from your responses that there is tension, a bit more explanation may be in order.
Most pastors let their children know that other people often see things differently — and that’s okay. They don’t bad-mouth the people but try to explain the differing points of view.
One tough situation is explaining why a particular family is leaving the church.
“I’ll try to give people the benefit of the doubt — ‘they felt they had legitimate reasons, and people need to find a church where they feel comfortable,'” said one pastor on the survey.
The most important principle seems to be: Don’t overstate the seriousness of the conflict. If you’re going to err, err on the side of understating the problem. Children don’t have the perspective their parents do. They have a hard time understanding that “5 percent of the congregation is giving us a hard time.” Instead, their lasting impression is likely to be “the whole church gave us a raw deal” — an attitude that can have long-lasting effects.
One pastor tells of a mistake in handling church tensions: “A man has been harassing me recently. He wants me to do something I can’t do. Our board has discussed the issue, and their decision has been clear. But this man feels I should override the board’s decision. He and I have discussed the situation many times; he has called me at all hours — even 4 o’clock in the morning! I had to hang up on him a time or two.
“The other night my 11-year-old daughter answered the phone and told my wife that Mr. Smith wanted to talk to me. I was upstairs, but my wife, knowing the situation, said, ‘Tell him your Daddy can’t talk to him right now.’
“My wife immediately regretted that she hadn’t told Mr. Smith herself, because it tore up my daughter. She didn’t know the situation, but she knew I was home. She naturally wondered, Why won’t Daddy talk to him? She sensed the tension, and she was scared. So that night I tried to explain that I’d tried to help the man, but couldn’t, and he kept bothering us. When she realized there wasn’t a genuine need, she could accept that. But she should never have been put in that position.”
Learning from that mistake, the parents now vow to handle such encounters themselves.
Gordon MacDonald, reflecting on his three pastorates in three different states, said: “I don’t think the kids ever heard us talk negatively about people. Frequently Gail or I would say, ‘This is a tough week for us, kids. Dad’s under a lot of pressure.’ Or ‘Dad’s had a few disappointments, so I may not be myself.’ But I wouldn’t say, ‘Joe Brown is really socking it to me this week.’
“Yes, there would be times when they knew somebody had called frequently. So it was not unusual to say, ‘You need to know that Mr. and Mrs. Smith are having a rough time these days. Mom and Dad are helping them. You may see them here at the house for a while tomorrow night. We’d really appreciate it if you’d just breathe a prayer for Mom and Dad that we can find the best way to help.’ As the kids grew older, they would join us in praying for these people and would delight when we would bring them good news about so-and-so. We didn’t break confidences. But we did paint broad-stroke pictures for them so they understood the things they observed.”
Another pastor, F. Dean Lueking of Grace Lutheran Church in River Forest, Illinois, established specific ground rules for talking about church conflicts.
“I always try to operate by this principle when I’m with my children: to talk about adversaries in such a way that if they were present, they’d feel their views had been fairly represented. I often find myself saying, ‘I can see why he feels that way, even though it distresses me.'”
This practice gives children a healthy perspective on conflict. They see that even while people differ, respect can be maintained.
At times, though, Lueking found he needed to invoke a second ground rule, “our four-minute rule.”
“Especially at the dinner table,” he says, “we would put a limit of four minutes on conversation about congregational troubles. Then it would be on to the Cubs, vacation plans, our reading, or whatever. Pastors can go on and on about church problems, and I wanted to make sure that didn’t dominate our talk and our thoughts.”
Dealing with the Curious
Sometimes parishioners treat the pastor’s kids as sources of inside information. One pastor reported the following encounter:
Ed Bailey, a middle-aged parishioner, approached the pastor’s 10-year-old son in the narthex after a morning service.
“Hi, Josh. How’s school?”
“All right,” said the pastor’s son.
“That’s good. Say, you know Marilyn Mason, don’t you?”
Josh nodded. Marilyn was a single woman who sang in the choir and occasionally helped in his Sunday school class.
“Has she ever come over to your house?”
Josh didn’t know what to say. He knew Marilyn had come over to talk to his dad and mom, but he didn’t know about what. So he said, “I think so.”
“How many times has she been there? A lot? Did you see her there this week?”
“I don’t know,” said Josh. Finally Ed quit the inquisition. Josh felt uncomfortable, and at home that afternoon he told his dad what had happened.
The pastor was irritated. “Marilyn had been coming to my wife and me for encouragement and counsel about some family concerns. Ed was a friend of Marilyn’s older brother. I told my son that the situation was none of Ed’s business and that I was sorry he had been put under that pressure.” He let his son know that he had done the right thing in pleading ignorance. “I told him it wasn’t his fault and assured him that I would handle the situation. I wanted to take all the burden for this off my son.”
So later that week, after he had calmed down, the pastor called Ed. “I told him that Josh had mentioned the conversation and felt uncomfortable because he didn’t know what to say. I asked Ed please not to put my children on the spot. I suggested that if he needed information, he should get it from me.”
Ed was silent. He didn’t offer an explanation for his curiosity, nor did the pastor ask for one. But the calm confrontation was effective.
“That was two years ago,” says the pastor, “and Ed didn’t seem offended. More important, he hasn’t grilled my kids since.”
How do you prepare children to respond to nosy members of the congregation?
Some ministry families tell their children only what they would be willing to share with the whole church. This is reasonably effective with younger children, but as they get older they will naturally observe the seamier side of ministry — frayed nerves, differences of opinion, criticism, conflict. Some children develop a sixth sense for what is appropriate to talk about with church members; other children may need some guidance.
One pastor instructs his children simply to say “I don’t know” or “You should ask Dad about that” when people ask for information about specific people.
Another ministry couple teaches their children that certain things are talked about only within the family. “When our kids were young, we distinguished between ‘good words’ (which they could use anytime) and ‘bad words’ (which they were never to use) and ‘secret words’ (mostly bodily parts or functions, which we were to talk about only within our own family). They’ve been pretty good about honoring our understanding about secret words. As they’re getting older, we’re able to build on that concept to explain that other kinds of things also stay within the family.”
Another pastor put it this way: “We’ll tell our children what other people in the congregation are likely to know. We want them to hear the story from us rather than from anyone else, if possible. So with sensitive information about someone, I’ve often said, ‘Here’s what other people know, but let’s not be the ones to talk about it, okay? That’s gossip.’ Our kids respond well to that. We let them know we’re trusting them, and we want to continue to develop that attitude of trust.”
Capitalizing on the Compensations
Perhaps the most important element in helping children have a good experience in the church is not to prepare them for the bad times but to accentuate the good experiences.
“I remember how rude people at church seemed to be to us kids,” says Chuck Smith, Jr. “After a service, I’d be standing there holding Dad’s hand, and they would step right between Dad and me — coming between us both literally and figuratively. They either ignored me or seemed annoyed that I was there, since their lives were falling apart and they had to talk to the pastor. I grew up hating adults, these people I always had to be polite to.
“But Dad was sensitive to what I was feeling. He would let me hang on to him, grab his pant leg, and I never heard him say, ‘Go away. I’m trying to talk to this person right now.'”
In addition, Chuck remembers his father’s going out of his way to make sure his son also realized the benefits of being the preacher’s kid. “He had a saying — ‘When your dad owns the candy store, you’re treated to certain privileges.’ For instance, one time Dad was the director of a week-long summer camp. He took me along, and most of the time I was kind of lonely because he wasn’t really there for me. There was always a crowd of people around him. I caught him only coming and going.
“But one evening, everyone was finishing dinner, and he came to my table and whispered, ‘Grab your swimsuit and meet me at the pool.’
“The pool was closed then. But he opened the lock and we got in. I’ll never forget it — just Dad and me swimming in the pool. It was like he ‘owned the candy store’ that weekend. As camp director, he had access to the pool, and he wasn’t breaking any rules by going in there with his son. Things like that were very special to me.”
Copyright ©1988 Christianity Today
