Like it or not, the children of a pastor or evangelist become a commodity sold for the “benefit” of the church. Sadly, many pastors and evangelists are not even aware they are doing this. They think parading their children in front of the church is just the “family serving Jesus.”
Evangelicals love children. They love it when children preach, sing, or use some other “talent” for the Lord. Let Johnny or Sally stand in front of the church and sing a song or preach and they will be greeted with a chorus of Amens.
I suppose, at some level, this kind of activity is quite harmless. Children singing, mimicking what they see adults do, can be seen in most every culture. However, as children get older, particularly when they become teenagers, many of them don’t want to be front and center any more. They don’t want to use their “talents” for the Lord. They would rather be not seen and not heard.
Talk to those who were raised as preacher’s kids (PK) or the children of a traveling evangelist. From their earliest memories they remember their parents expecting them to be perfect children. After all, if a pastor can’t rule his own home, how can he rule the house of God? PK’s are expected to always be a shining example of what a well-behaved child looks like. They are never free to be like all the other kids. They must never do anything that would harm their Dad’s reputation in the church or the community.
PK’s are taught they must be obedient at all times. No matter what other children may or may not be allowed to do, the PK must explicitly follow the rules and demands of their pastor father. Failure to do so is rebellion against God and everyone knows that rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft. (I Samuel 15:23) God hates rebellious children and pastor Father, for the sake of his standing in the church and the community must crush the child’s rebellion.
PK’s rarely are allowed to have their own space. They are not allowed to make mistakes or just be like most every other kid in the church or school. Their lives are always parsed through the “how will this reflect on Dad’s ministry” filter.
Pastor’s kids often are paraded before the church in singing groups, plays, and any other special activity the church deems essential to the proper training of the church’s children. When PK’s are young they don’t seem to mind these kinds of things but as they age many of them begin to rebel over always being a part of the “dog and pony” show. They are rarely given the option of whether or not to participate. “What would people think if the PK’s weren’t in the VBS program or Christmas play?”
What is best for the PK’s is secondary to how things will look to church members. The most important thing is maintaining the fantasy that the pastor and his family are perfect.
It should come as no shock then that behind close doors the perfect family is not so perfect. This is especially true when PK’s reach teenage years and begin to develop their own personality and have their own wants and desires. All of a sudden Johnny or Sally don’t want to be made a spectacle. They don’t want to be a singing, talking puppet used for the amusement of the church congregation. They want freedom. They want to be able to choose their own path in life.
Result? Behind the scenes warfare between the pastor father and his children. The more they rebel the more they are told they are ruining their father’s ministry. PK’s are guilted with lines like, what would Jesus think of your behavior? Bible verses are quoted and demands are made. Lost in all of this is what is best for the child.
Personally, I am against most church activities, programs, and ministries that target children or teenagers. These church activities, programs, and ministries tend to manipulate and exploit children and teenagers. Children are encouraged to get “saved” at an early age and after getting “saved” they are constantly reminded that God expects them to obey their parents, their pastor, and any other adult that has authority over them.
I am not suggesting that children should not be taught to obey. However, when God is interjected into the mix it is far too easy for manipulation and exploitation to take place. Countless children and teenagers have been guilted into doing something by an adult threatening them with God’s judgment. The children, out of fear of God and their parents, do what is asked for them. This, in my opinion, is a recipe for dysfunction as an adult.
A lot of PK’s, evangelist’s kids, and deacon’s kids read this blog. I hope they will share their stories in the comments.
Yeah, life in a fishbowl is so lonely. It’s hard to let people get to know your genuine self when your first priority is being a good example and not making your family/church look bad. I was never quite sure who to trust so I learned to be careful about what I said and did around others.
I’m 29 now and I still do that. I love my parents and don’t blame them for this at all- they did the best they knew how to do and were great parents overall. They just couldn’t protect us from the expectations of others.
I do think pastors really need to switch to another line of work while raising older kids and teenagers, though. Most of the PK’s I know have had issues as adults.
As a PK – and especially as a preacher’s daughter who wasn’t heterosexual -it’s not easy when you hit puberty and youth group leaders teach that even thinking about sex is a sin and that girls are responsible for how men and boys react to them.
I still don’t know how a 12-year-old could ever be held responsible for the sexual feelings of anyone, much less grown ass men. As an adult it seriously creeps me out that we were given that burden to carry.
But it was such a relief to go to college and not have anyone care what I thought and then later on to move to a city where more people are LGBT-friendly.
Extraordinarily insightful and powerful piece. I lived it. Thanks so much.
Thanks James!
I was 14 when my dad left high profile church ministry for para church ministries that allowed us to be just another family in the church we attended. Actually, he was fired. I don’t know the exact circumstances now (it was 35yrs ago) but I do know that it was mere months after I won a national writing contest that I had to turn down because my article “made the church look bad and he might lose his job”. It was a final oh-so-obvious example in a lifetime of events that demonstrated that my existence served only to make him look good. The cost to my own soul was irrelevant.
It is a wonder that PK’s are not in therapy.(of course many are)
I think there was a trickle down effect. As a pastor I thought the church, I mean Jesus
, came first. For 25 years who I was didn’t matter. The church was all that mattered. I think this attitude got passed down to Polly and my children. Who they were didn’t matter either. The most important thing for them was to be a “good” example. It should come as no surprise that some PK’s rebel against this and their rebellion is often epic.
Bottom line? It is not a mentally healthy way to live. I would never recommend such a life to anyone. Want to be a preacher? Don’t marry. Follow in Jesus’s steps. No wife, no kids. But of course that can’t happen due to the Bible verses that suggest a preacher should have a wife and kids.
As usual Bruce, you pretty much nailed it. Life as the PK is all about making your Dad and the ministry look good. You come last behind the needs of an entire church for everything. Your only value is in how you can make the ministry look better, make your dad look better, or meet the needs of the ministry. I became a 3-4 year old Sunday School teacher at 12 because we were short-handed. I learned to play piano with no lessons, just watching other pianists in churches we visited because my dad needed a pianist. I was my father’s personal secretary from the age of 13 until I graduated from college, all because of the family I was born into.
When I was raped as a teenager, when my mother got to the ER the first thing she said was “I hope you told a good story about those bruises, because the things you’re saying to me now could ruin your father’s ministry. There was no concern for me or how I was doing or the fact that I was hurt, it was just automatic damage control mode. My dad’s first reaction was that if anyone ever found out, he would do what he had to do to insulate himself and the ministry (i.e. disown me). Fortunately, by that time I had been trained to fake my way through any social interaction.
I learned early on that no one could be trusted and anyone would betray you if given the opportunity. It is a lesson I carry to this day, as I still trust almost no one and have made almost no friends.
So many of my PK friends are the same as me – they trust rarely and their every thought in making a decision relates back to being in the ministry. For us, even though the ministry is as savage as a Roman Arena, it almost feels kind of safe. Follow the rules, keep your head down, hid anything bad that happens to you, and find a way to be useful and you might survive. Functioning in the outside world and interacting with people who have no clue what you are constantly thinking/assuming is the scary part.
I know that was long, but thanks for letting me rant.
Thanks for sharing this. When I moved away to pastor my last church, my three oldest sons stayed behind. Two of them continued to attend church but they began attending one of the largest churches in the area. I have no doubt they, consciously or not, wanted to be in a church where they were not the focus of attention or expected to be at the beckoned call of the pastor.
My sons are good men but I wouldn’t blame them for hating me. The church came first. If something needed done, Pastor and wife, along with six kids, got it done. When my sons got good jobs they fave thousands of dollars to the church to “support” their Dad’s work. I know they wanted to help but I also know there was a guilt factor and it was expected that they give their money.
Bruce
I’m not a PK, but my last act as a Christian included heavy involvement with a GARB pastor’s daughter. She was afraid of doing the things she wanted to do if it went in contradiction to what she thought her father would want even though she was an adult living on her own. I also got the strong impression that her religion was more based on worship of her biological father than her heavenly father.
She also told me on at least one occasion that she was far more interested in appearing good than actually being good. I obviously can’t tell you what she would have been like had her father been a haberdasher or door to door balsamic vinaigrette salesman, but I tend to think the fact that she reverted to being a near-perfect bitch who couldn’t stand up for herself was largely due to the fact that she had to spend all her formative years playing daddy’s perfect little angel to the church ladies and quashing any thought that might result in rebellion in order to continue receiving her father’s love.
It’s sad, too. In the end I think I had more respect for her father than she did, since her younger brother ended up doing all the stereotypical rebellious PK stuff and they never disowned him as far as I could tell.
I know in my own life and from what I have observed in other pastors who have left Christianity, that those of us who were in controlling fundamentalist churches can go to extremes once we are freed. Once freed from all the rules and regulations, it is not uncommon to see people do all kind of crazy stuff. Why? Because they can. I know, for a time, I tested most everything that was considered a taboo in my religion. I found out quickly that I didn’t like alcohol. I found out porn was overrated.
Over time the extremes fade and hopefully the person comes back to a centered place in life. Like a pendulum swinging from one extreme to another, eventually, the pendulum will swing less and less from extreme to extreme, and finally rest in a centered place.
I’m still in the process of trying to find out who I really am. I can’t expect to find in a few moments what was lost over the course of a long life. It takes time.
Thanks for commenting, GEDS.
Predictably, you hit the proverbial nail right on the thumb again Bruce. As a recovering pastor, i have had to reflect back on my (so-called) ministry, and assess whether I had put my family through some of the things noted in your essay. Of course I did, but I also strived to ensure that my kids maintained their individuality, were allowed to be human, and were not expected to be “better” than the “other” church kids or teens in the youth group. As a result of this, all my adult children still keep in contact with us and visit all the time, which means we have access to our grandkids!!!! (Sweet).
However, the fishbowl effect, i.e. the expectations (lethal expectations) by the church membership was grueling for my kids. I and they were criticized by some loudmouths and held to absurd standards by people who had their own definitions of Christianity and how Christians ought to behave regardless of whether their definitions were actually in the Bible. Some of those who treated my kids with contempt had issues with their own kids far more serious than I had with mine. Yeah the teen years are rough, but they grew out of it. Frankly, after what my kids saw with fang-deployed “church” people, I’m really astonished they still go to church!
A singing family once visited our church and the stair-stepped kids (adorable all), were put on “display” by their austere “father,” and anorexic mother. They were all zombie-like, spoke in joyless monotones, made rote statements, and exhibited a robotic demeanor characterized by a lifeless recitation of all the right things. Yet, their monotone contradicted their message that true happiness and joy comes only in Christ. I felt sorry for the kids, who had to live the life of Christian “roadies.” I’m glad I never put my kids on display. Yet, this is a staple of modern churchianity and I agree with Bruce that parents are ill-advised to put their kids through this.
Another preacher’s family I am aware of, the uptight wife and kids walked on eggshells lest they provoke the wrath of the patriarchal lunatic who rules the house with a rod of iron. The kids are all malnourished, the wife is chronically ill and anorexic, and when the older children reached age 18, they bailed.
This preacher cannot bear the thought that someone might look beyond the veil into the torture chamber that is their house, so he had imposed a complete church and people blockade that imprisons his brood, and keeps non-relatives out. So much for “given to hospitality.”
I think the pressure this family has placed itself in has resulted in a high-intensity stress atmosphere because the thought that others “might know” them is unbearable. But I have no sympathy because they’ve done it to themselves and thrust the rest of them away from their mental ward.
I’m glad I did not put my family into such a pressure cooker. Still, the pastor’s family is held up to intense scrutiny and unreal expectations. Such things ought not to be!
Shame on God’s people for forcing their ministers and their families into such an unrealistic fictional melodrama where every exaggerated move is analyzed strictly for its impact on “the ministry.” Let people be people and kids be kids.
Ken,
Thank you for sharing your personal story.
Your last line sums it up well.”Let people be people and kids be kids.” It seems that a lot of what goes on in religion is a denial of who we are as humans. A lot of time is spent trying to shape and mold people into our perception of God. Instead of letting everyone seek out their own path, many religions choose to mold people in such a way that they all act and look the same way.
Bruce
As I read this, I was reminded of an incident from when I was 15 or so. Dad always expected us to be model children, even though he was not a pastor. He held us to a very high standard; but, I have to say, he held himself to the same standard. There was no duplicity in his life. Although he spanked us, he never physically abused us. He was doing the best he could with what he believed at the time.
The teachers at the private school I attended overheard me talking about tv, rock music and movies. They told my mom (who happened to be at the school that day), and I knew I was dead when my dad found out. At home there was some yelling and a thick layer of guilt poured on, but no spanking. I think my dad was crushed by my actions.
Dad told a missionary friend of his, who happened to be there with all of his kids. The missionary caught me after church one night and dressed me down about how I was affecting my dad’s testimony. How I should be more like his kids. All the while I was thinking about what hellions his kids were and the stuff they did. His oldest daughter ended up being sent to the Hepsebah House. (Look it up if you don’t know what it is. The stories that came out of there are unreal.)