Sunday Morning Survival Pointers for Pastors’ Kids

For some pastors’ kids (PKs), Sunday morning is like walking the green mile, step by agonizing step closer to imminent doom. For others it’s mostly great with a side of frustration and annoyance. For most of my upbringing, I was in the second camp and occasionally slid into the first. What follows are seven suggestions for any PK that (as I learned, some at great expense) can help make Sunday mornings better.

Tuck your shirt in when mom tells you to. No, it doesn’t make you holier, but it does avoid a stupid fight. And you can just untuck it when you get to Sunday school anyhow.

If you haven’t already, take up coffee drinking. Start at home and keep it going all through church. There is no grief like the grief a PK takes for falling asleep in church.

Hit the donuts. A PK can’t afford to be low-carb or sugar free. Gluten free just won’t hack it. Donuts bring happiness and keep your mouth full so you can politely decline to answer the nosy questions some church members will fire at you.

Hit the donuts again. Sunday dinner isn’t happening until dad gets home from church, and that might not be until sometime after sunset. You need some fortification.

Just go ahead and volunteer for that service day or church work day or nursery duty or Christmas caroling or whatever it is. Someone else will volunteer you if you don’t, so get it over with and earn some brownie points.

Do not shoot your hand up to be the first one to answer questions in Sunday school. That makes you look like a know-it-all and a show-off. Go ahead and raise your hand to answer if nobody else has after 7-10 seconds. At that point there’s about an 88 percent chance you’ll get called on anyway.

Have a sense of humor; like a real big one. Laughter is the only escape mechanism sometimes. Find humor where you can. Laugh with other people. On occasion laugh at other people. Laugh at the sermon (you can get away with it, unlike anyone else). Laugh at whatever. You need a lift, and laughter is your life preserver.

This piece is excerpted and adapted with permission from The Blazing Center. For even more survival tips, see the original piece.

Barnabas Piper serves as the Brand Manager for Ministry Grid at LifeWay Christian Resources. Piper blogs at The Blazing Center and is the author of The Pastors Kid: Finding Your Own Faith and Identity and the forthcoming Help My Unbelief: Why Doubt Is Not The Enemy of Faith as well as co-hosting The Happy Rant podcast. Piper lives in the Nashville area with his wife and two daughters.