PKs are people too!
Photo by Samantha Sophia on Unsplash
One of the things I vowed to myself when I got ordained was that my kid would not hate the church just because I was a pastor.
My daughter was so proud of me on my ordination day, it was so sweet. She knew something important was happening, but at age 5 she didn’t really understand that the path ahead of her had just gotten a lot more complicated because her mom became a pastor.
Pastors kids - or PKs, as they are sometimes called, have a reputation.
They are either so good and careful under the weight of all those expectations, or they shed them completely by acting outside of each one.
Like I said - PKs have a reputation.
But I’m not sure it’s fair. Even if it’s true in many or even most cases, it’s not fair.
After all, the pastor is called to live a life worthy of the calling, to live above reproach, but our families are not.
They do not make the same vows as we do, do not sign up for the pedestal we are placed on. They most certainly are not called to the church as we are.
And yet, if we’re honest, there is a kind of secondary pedestal we put these clergy kids on.
One they certainly didn't ask for, and one that is easier to fall from because they are just kids. Regular kids.
Learning, growing, making mistakes, all under the watchful eye of an entire community or congregation because they happen to be related to a public figure.
So then how do we care for these kids?
From both sides of the equation too - clergy and congregation.
As clergy, how do we let them just be themselves - and as congregation members, how can we make sure we’re not applying our expectations of the pastor onto their children?
(This would be a good time to reflect on the unreasonable expectations congregations have set on their pastors but that’s a blog post for another day.)
I recently asked my daughter, now 12 (going on 20) what she liked about being a pastor’s kid. She had only one answer, and that was “I like the privilege of going into the pastor office area.” It made me laugh but also broke my heart a little bit.
That’s it? I thought. That can’t be it.
When I asked her what things she didn’t like, the list was a lot longer.
She said that people assume a lot of things about her, like that she knows a lot about the Bible, or that her faith is really solid, or that people think they know her just because they know me. “People talk to me like I’m supposed to know them and I don't,” she said. “They don’t know me either, they talk to me like I’m you but I’m not you.”
I’m not you mom.
Oooof.
Tweens are the reason they call it the “brutal truth” I am certain.
But she’s not wrong
I wonder if we can hold spaces for PKs in ways that we haven’t thought of before. I wonder if we can honor them for who they are, how they are unique and wonderful, and let them be those things outside of the public eye.
I hold the promise I made to myself when I was ordained close these days. I don’t want my daughter to hate the church. I want to pass my faith down to her just as much as any other parent does. And I also know she is at the age where creating space from her parents is natural, where wanting to have her own faith and her own values is normal and a part of what she is trying to navigate.
Covid had the unintended consequence of giving my child space from being the pastor’s kid in front of everyone. She doesn’t come to church in person anymore. She attends at home, in her pajamas, on the couch. “No strangers talk to me at home mom” she says. And who can blame her?
As a pastor, and a parent, I’ve had to ask myself, what is more important to me? Is my child’s in person attendance at my church more important to me than her faith, her boundaries?
As a clergy parent, here are other questions I have been asking lately:
Do I have the space for this? Can I let her be herself?
Can I be only a parent and not a pastor for my kid? Can I separate the two?
Do I trust her to seek out faith in safe spaces?
Do I believe that she knows herself well enough to know what is safe and what is not?
Can I stay with her in this messy space as she figures it out, just as I did?
Can I handle the judgment that is sure to arise when my tween does not attend worship with me?
Here are some questions to consider if you are a congregation member:
Do you know the pastor’s child/ren’s name?
Do you know the name of any of the other children in your congregation?
Do you talk to the pastor's kid more than you talk to any other young person in your midst?
What do you think you know about the pastor’s child?
Have you placed any expectations on the pastor’s child that you haven’t placed on other kids in the congregation?
Can you let your pastor be a parent outside of your purview?
None of these questions are easy for any of us.
But asking them matters a lot.
It matters to pastors, yes, but it really, really, matters to those PKs.
Rev. Natalia Terfa
Natalia is a Lutheran pastor and author who lives in Minneapolis with her hubby, kiddo, and kitty babies. She loves to bake, to read, practice yoga, and find nature adventures. She is passionate about the church of the future, one with no boundaries and filled to the brim with love and grace and laughter and snark and a lot of fellow “not that kind of Christians.”
Natalia co-hosts Cafeteria Christian, a podcast for people who love Jesus but aren’t so sure about his followers.
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