Cody Bess
The Not-So-Perfect Pastors' Family
It's tough being a pastor's kid. I should know. I married a pastor's kid, and we now have four pastor's kids of our own. Nearly everyone assumes pastor's kids are either rule-following goody two-shoes or rebels, ready to run counter to their parents' beliefs. It's not just members of our church who look to them as pastor's kids—their "PK" identity extends to everyone they interact with, from their math teachers to baseball coaches.
Living under the shadow of these pressures and preconceptions can be incredibly discouraging, but there's a flip side to being a ministry kid that more than makes up for the tough stuff. Pastor's kids have an incredible opportunity; they get a front row seat to see God at work... if we let them.
Too often, though, we don't let them. One of the biggest mistakes my husband Kerry and I made when our oldest sons Ryan and Josh were growing up was our reluctance to share our struggles with them. A lot of parents know this feeling. We've seen the statistics, and the outlook for Christian kids doesn't seem good. Barna Research found that more than half of churchgoing teenagers will leave the church as young adults—some temporarily, some permanently.
I can remember Kerry and I being overwhelmed at times with situations at church when the kids were younger but somehow managing to pull it together and hide our frustration. It wasn't that we wanted Josh and Ryan to think we were perfect. We just assumed that the boys would interpret our struggles as a by-product of being in the ministry rather than a by-product of being human. We gave them far too little credit.
By keeping silent about our struggles we inadvertently taught Ryan and Josh to mask their own hurts and insecurities. They were outwardly doing the whole "good Christian kid" thing, but they were dying on the inside. Instead of experiencing life in all its fullness as they'd been promised, by their late teenage years our boys felt empty. In college they looked in the usual places for ways to fill their emptiness, but nothing worked. Bravely admitting to God, and then to us, that they felt they were living a secondhand faith, they decided that if you don't believe in God because of your own convictions there is no point in pretending that you believe at all.
Now 23 and 24 years old, Ryan and Josh have written Firsthand: Ditching Secondhand Religion for a Faith of Your Own to share their story. It's a brutally honest account of their faith journey. Ryan and Josh realized that the first step in owning their faith was to be set free from religion and embrace their personal relationship with Christ. They write, "One of the most liberating and powerful statements of all time comes from the lips of Jesus: 'You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free' (John 8:32). The only way we've been able to experience freedom is by making the choice to get completely gut-level honest with God and others." Through honest conversations with Kerry and I, their friends, and most of all God, they ultimately came to embrace a faith that was their very own.
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Comments
Merry Hunt
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John Keirsey
Good article! Galatians teach us that as believers we've been saved from sin, and saved from legalism. The freedom of the Holy Spirit is the freedom to do all the will of God, not to do what we want. How many of us learn legalism from Mom and Dad, our schools, our society, = and, we hate it. Yet rebellion brings a lifestyle that leads to death, - especially death in our hearts. To live in the Spirit we have to be brutally honest with ourselves. Better to confess our sins, and our anxieties and fears to God and draw in close to Him, than to pretend to be what we are not. Chris Shook brings to the fore a real concern about living out the life of a disciple that Jesus saved us for. What a blessing to see her beloved sons drawing in close to the living God! They can change the world there, in that place. God bless them.
Tim Fall
This is good advice for all parents, Chris, whether in professional ministry or not. We have two kids in their 20s, and letting them in on faith frustrations over the years has been helpful, and they've shared their own with us as they've grown older. Cheers, Tim ( timfall.wordpress.com )
Cheryl Okimoto
Thank you for this insightful piece. I hope many young parents get this message and are more honest with their children growing up. It doesn't just apply to faith either, but to all areas of life. One of the worst bits of advice I ever got when I was young was "don't let your children hear you fighting" which I interpreted as "never disagree with your husband in front of the kids" (which really was the intent behind it). Trying to do that caused all kinds of trouble. We need to let our children see our struggles and how we overcome them. It will give them a much better idea of how to live their own adult life. They won't be quite so shocked when things get difficult in Christian living, marriage, child-rearing, finances, etc. They will be better equipped to face their own struggles. Thank you for this word of wisdom.
Loreli Cockram
Wow! This is so good to read and I'll definitely be picking up that book! Our kids are just entering their teens. I honestly don't know how you could hide your struggles though. I'm not very good at that, but this gives me great comfort that perhaps my PKs will not be permanently damaged by it and, in fact, perhaps can benefit from seeing my "humanness" and how I need God so desperately. Thank you!
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