Kim had a meeting this evening for some of her Midtown Kids teachers. Kim organizes the children’s ministry at one of our worship gatherings, and has been working on developing the teams. She needed a little assistance with the tech/media side of things, so I tagged along. Our own kids had to tag along, and got to eat pizza (or wings, in Annabelle’s case) for their willingness. As soon as the pizza was scarfed down, they all took off running for the downstairs play area. Kim watched Annabelle peel out the door and said, “Yep, she’s a Pastor’s Kid–running through the church.”
Kim was kidding. Sort of.
Pastor’s kids have gotten a somewhat well-deserved bad rap over the years. Jon Acuff posted a hilarious look into the typology of PKs over at his site Stuff Christians Like. If you’re not familiar with SCL and Jon Acuff, you need to check it out. I’ve got his page fed into my Google Reader so that I can see what he writes every day. Good stuff…go ahead and click over. I’ll be right here waiting when you get back.
I have worked with lots of pastor’s kids over the past 20 years, and now have 4 of my own. They do seem to deal with a little more pressure to perform, or at least feel pressured to fit the image of the PK. There’s an element of truth to the story of the pastor’s family living in the fishbowl of church life. I’ve talked to my teenage son about it in the past, just to make sure he knows that I don’t expect him to be super-Christian. I would hate for my expectations to have a negative effect on my kids.
Now don’t misunderstand me; I certainly want my kids to follow Jesus. I want them to love God and love others, to live lives of authentic faith that prompt them to serve and give, to be more concerned with the Kingdom of God than anything else.
But I don’t want to guilt them into playing a role. Kim and I believe that we have a great opportunity to shape the way our kids see Jesus and the church, and that as we live transparent and Jesus-focused lives, our kids will see that our actions match our words. We talk about following Jesus with our kids as we are in the process of following Jesus, if that makes sense…
I am sure that there will be days to come that find us shaking our heads and wondering what our kids were thinking when they did ________________. But we are working to create an atmosphere of grace and truth, of open and honest communication, so that our kids have a healthy understanding of Jesus, the church, and the kingdom of God.
At the end of things, I want my kids to be glad that they were PKs. Now if you want to talk about Missionary Kids, that’s another topic all-together!
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