Euan mentioned telling his children when he has to work evenings not that it’s a meeting, but that he’s serving people. Let me tell you from experience, that this is not helpful to your kids. I grew up as a PK. And I heard it all. I knew my dad was serving others, and I was glad for that. I also knew that serving others was often more of a priority than serving us as his children.

Let me be clear that most of the pressure I felt was either pressure I put on myself, or pressure from the people in the congregation, not pressure from my parents. And let me also state that I think any family who is involved in church will have this - we were part of a small church where members regularly gave up evenings to lead small groups, or attend board meetings, or teach kids club, so certainly other people were serving too, but it just wasn’t helpful to hear that dad wouldn’t be home to just hang out that night, or whatever (my parents rarely missed events that were important for us as kids) because he was “serving someone”. It mostly just created a jealousy, and a wondering when my own problems and needs would be big enough that dad would spend an evening “serving” me.

We try to be very intentional in our parenting (we’ve been parents almost a year), but it is challenging — especially in our case. Both my wife and I are full-time pastors, serving two separate churches.

We need all the tips we can get!

We need to hear this and continue to learn from seasoned leaders so that we don’t create preventable vulnerability to attacks from the devil in our children’s lives.

Thank you so much.

My husband is the campus pastor of our very first video venue launched at Easter 2008. He is one of your biggest fans. I am sure the multiple children has something to do with it. As a PK, there were so many issues for me to consider when agreeing to follow God’s clear direction for our lives. One of my biggest concerns was how it would affect our four small children (#5 gestating at the moment)I am delighted to say that they are thriving…in ways I never expected. They are in a much smaller environment (portable church in a middle school) with so much more personal attention. They also help me with my responsibilities at their age level. As someone else said, we don’t feel guilty about times when we can’t get to every gathering or volunteer for every job. I choose very carefully how I serve so as to focus on my primary responsibility right now, which is wife and mommy first, pastor’s wife, 2nd or 3rd. One of the best things my dad did for us growing up as PK’s was to never lay on us the guilt or the responsibility of our behavior meeting some standard because we were PK’s. He encouraged us to be followers of Christ, first and foremost and then went about setting a very humble and real example of that for us. To this day, I am eternally grateful to him for that….I never had to go down all those other crazy paths because, I saw it up close and personal when all the other folks in the congregation were making poor choices. It was much easier for me to choose to follow Christ. Even though ministry was never what I envisioned for myself or my kids, I believe that it is where God has led us and believe that He will be faithful to give us the grace and wisdom to parent them well. Thank you so much for your comments and the thoughts for the future of so much personal attention…I never considered that.
Blessings!!

People do say incredibly rude or hurtful things to their ministers. We try to respond as Christ would, but you I wish some of our flock could see some of the impressions my boys can do of them!