#622. The Pastor’s Kid.
Sep 21st by adminI recently saw the GI Joe movie. My only complaint, other than that Snakes Eyes’ mask inexplicably covered his lips too which created this weird gummy smile, was that there was no public service message at the end.
That used to be my favorite part of the cartoon. At the end of each episode on TV, there would be a thirty second clip of some dumb kids trying to do something like pet a cougar. Then a member of the Joe squad would come out and say, “Whoa kids, cougars live to maul and maim. Though their fur is soft and downy, you should never pet one.” The kids would look up and say, “Gee thanks Bazooka, you really saved us today.” He’d look at the camera and respond, “Well now you know, and knowing is half the battle.”
Knowing is half the battle, deep words from GI Joe and certainly words that were floating in my head when I decided to write about a subject I’ve largely avoided- Pastor’s Kids.
I guess as a PK, there’s part of me that didn’t really know how to approach the topic. There are about a billion ways you can write about the oddity that is a pastor kid and I wanted to do us justice. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that yes, knowing is half the battle and if I can help you know what kind of pastor kid you have at your church, I’ve done a public service.
I believe there are primarily four types of pastor’s kids:
1. The Replica
2. The Romeo
3. The Rebel
4. The Regular
And the easiest way to tell which kind you’re dealing with is to take this quick quiz:
1. During youth Sunday, your pastor’s kid:
A. Delivers a fire and brimstone sermon, with an altar call and spontaneous baptisms.
B. Winks at his girlfriend from the pulpit and mentions that ladies can follow him on twitter if they’d like or myspace or facebook or just in the parking lot.
C. Promises to come to church that day and not throw anything round or square at the puppet team. Again.
D. None of the above.
2. During camp, your pastor’s kid:
A. Questions the theology of the counselors leading the camp and feels glad that he packed his 37 pound concordance Bible with him.
B. Plays the three chords of guitar he knows, kisses 4 girls from 3 separate youth groups and almost gets kicked out for getting caught outside his cabin at night.
C. You’re kidding right? He didn’t go to camp. He didn’t want to and that camp still has him on the blacklist after last year for that thing with the paint.
D. None of the above.
3. Your pastor’s kid tells a counselor:
A. “The pressures of tending for a flock are really heavy. And I haven’t found a date to the eighth grade dance yet.”
B. “Is that your wife in that photo on your desk? Well done.”
C. “I’m here because my parents made me come. And I wish my dad spent more time loving the people in his own house instead of the people in church. He came home empty some days.”
D. None of the above
4. Your pastor’s kid drives:
A. Demons out of people.
B. A jeep. He’s the guy with the jeep.
C. A Volvo wagon with band stickers that may or may not be Swedish punk rock devil worshippers.
D. None of the above
5. Your pastor’s kid plays:
A. The organ or the harp although he’s not above a little tambourining if the girl he is courting wants to practice the HWMT.
B. The previously mentioned acoustic guitar, but he may also buy a pair of bongos when he realizes girls like mellow things like Jack Johnson.
C. Electric guitar or turntables depending on what is currently considered the most “screw you mom and dad” music at the time.
D. None of the above
6. Your pastor’s kid walks around church as if:
A. He’s praying for the building and the work of the lamb to be done there.
B. You can find him at the club, bottle full of bub.
C. He’s looking for some sort of structural damage he could exploit with an M80.
D. None of the above
7. Your pastor’s kid’s theme song is:
A. Pick a hymn, any hymn.
B. “Son of a preacher man.” Was there any doubt?
C. Is there a particular song you don’t like? Then it’s that one.
D. None of the above.
8. In church, your pastor’s kid sits with:
A. His mom on the front row but he’s got his eyes on the big pastor chair that’s on stage. Someday, someday.
B. With the shortys and or honeys and on some occasions, his boos.
C. Sometimes in the front row in an ironic way but mostly in the very back row.
D. None of the above.
Answer Key:
If you answered mostly A:
Ahh, the Replica, that junior version of the senior pastor. He knows more Bible verses than you, spends his summers practicing preaching in his tree house and knocks it out every year on youth Sunday. This kid came out of the womb knowing what he wanted to do. He is a chip off the old pulpit.
If you answered mostly B
Well, hello, hello Romeo. The ladies man. The “hi, you come here to worship often?” Charming, intuitive, slick and currently giving his parents ulcers. You can only hear so many stories from deacons or elders before the pastor starts hitting the pink stuff.
If you answered mostly C
Unlike, Stryper, this cat is not saying “To Hell with the Devil.” He’s dedicated to going the opposite direction that everyone in church and youth group goes. He’s going to swim in the baptismal, get kicked off each retreat he’s forced to attend and eventually realize he filtered God through the image of his dad all these years and they’re very different people.
If you answered mostly D
You’ve got a pretty regular kind of pastor’s kid on your hands. He’s not going to cause a ruckus but he’s also not going to lead a revival anytime soon. Nothing to see here folks, move it along.
Those are the four stereotypes I experienced most. Where the ladies at? Great question. I wrote this from the guy’s perspective because 100% of my own experiences as a pastor’s kid have been as a guy. (Maybe we should get a lady PK to write a guest post.) Me personally, I was a bit of the Replica and the Romeo. I loved speaking at church, but I spent most of my youth trying to get girls to make out with me. Emphasis on the word “trying.”
That’s my take on the pastor’s kid. What’s yours?
Are you a pastor’s kid?
Did your pastor’s kid fit any of the molds I offered today? If not, what stereotype did I completely miss?
Comments
I grew up being your regular PK… but remember that almost everyone expected me to be the Replica. A magnifying glass was on me and my siblings ever since I was a little girl… I grew up living a very moralistic lifestyle… pretedig that I was the perfect kiddo. 30 yrs later… i'm still a PK and still have the magnifying glass on me. It's been hard as I've recently gotten divorced and i'm back at my parent church helping serve there. Does that make me a Rebel now? Hmmmm……
Great post Jon.
I loved the list and have been waiting for this post.
I was a PK/TK. My father was not only the pastor, he was also the bible teacher at the Christian high school.
I consider myself the chameleon or wolf in sheeps clothing. I was there for every youth group or prayer meeting. I had all the answers. I was asked questions from adults as though dad had shared every curriculum lesson and all his sermon notes with me.
Church lingo was how I was raised and when people hear it they feel comfortable.
"Did you hear what Lisa said? Abba, father, thank you that we can FELLOWSHIP with your sheep. Lead us father into the potluck for we hunger and thirst for old Mrs Smiths apple pie"
People trusted me to do things like collect the attendance sheets after each class at the high school or speak in front of church. I helped all my "friends" skip school by crossing thier names off of the absent list. I was also THRILLED to put my dad on the spot by getting up to talk about the youth retreat and making jokes while I was up there. The youth retreat that I spent flirting with the boys and hiding to smoke cigarretes every chance I got.
There are only a few people who don't trust the chameleon and I think that is what makes us hard to "save".
Also people used to ask what it was like to have my dad as my dad. The question itself makes me want to be in therapy.
I am enjoying SCL to the fullest! Thanks
not a pk, but my mom was a worship leader for years and my dad was a deacon.
i was mostly a good girl, but liked to rebel on occasion, like the time i send a unsolicited reply card back to a christian college. it asked what major i was interested in. I replied "happy husband hunting".
Rolling on the floor. This was so funny, and so true! All the PKs I know are regulars, though. They've seen that side of the pulpit, and want to live their own lives.
Worship Accompaniment Music at Spiritrax
As a former PK, I'm curious about where the character I call "Conniver" fits in.
He's the 50/50 split between rebel and replica.
Sits front and center on Sundays, steals cars on mondays.
I'm very familiar with this guy, and wondered if he was worth his own category.
whats the pink sutff?
I've been a PK since birth but being a girl, I feel like I don't really fit into those 4 categories per say… but the Pastor's Wife in training one that has been mentioned in a number of comments… as referred to earlier,
being a PK does put you under the microscope and the people in the church watch your every move and I distinctedly remembed my dad saying that I had to set a good example for the other kids…
and yes, you see the best and the worst of the church esp. the fact that in spite of it all, hypocrisy does exist in the church…
But somehow I was at every prayer meeting, taught Sunday school, mentored a new Christian who was older than me, led praise and worship, prayed out loud, organised outreaches…. and at 20years old, I've come into my own and now happily doing these things out of the own willingness of my heart to serve God and love his people
I was an MMK (minister of music's kid) although now I guess I would be referred to as a WLK (worship leader's kid). We share some similarities with the PKs but we're actually a different animal completely.
Well being the oldest PK of 4, I was probably more of a mixture of 3 and 4… Not always the rebllious one, but certainly capable of being the rebel
and that was for todays post… Now probably just a 4.
"PKs live on a double-edged sword: they drink early and deeply from the living waters, but they learn about hypocrisy and human shortfallenness wayyyy too early and far too personally." – preacherlady
I totally agree… I learned early which was a GREAT thing. but i also learned early how awful some "christian" people can be and it drove me away for a while. I have to remind myself that – "So that your faith might not rest on men's wisdom, but on God's power." 1 Corinthians 2:5
PREACHER's Daugthers, I am one of those…and we get the worst raps. I think people were waiting for me to wind up pregnant or find me making out with some boy behind the church. They thought we partied hard. When I would tell people that I was a pastor's daguther, they would be like, OH you must be wild…as if I was going to pull Jello Shots out of my purse or something. And luckily I did not fit into those stereotypes, only by the grace of God. I did date my fair share of boys at church and then I would break up with them and they would never come back to church. I was quickly told to stop dating boys at church by my parents because our attendance was going down ;o)I think they were kidding, or maybe not. Pastor's kids can often be found going to sleep in church and my dad is the pastor of a country church with really hard wooden pews. My parents were really cool and still let us go out on the weekends and go to school dances, things like that. But we always had to go to church in the morning, no matter what time we got home and more than once I fell asleep and cracked my head on the hard pew. This was a great topic because I think people have a ton of different stereotypes for PK's
6B almost killed me! LOL!!! *whew*
so i'm a PK (recent) and so his hubby. I'm a D reformed C. And he's a D.
How about those of us that weren't PKs, but might as well have been?
In our small church, the PKs were graduated and gone by my sophomore year and we (the DKs) got to be the surrogates.
Need a substitute SS teacher? Need someone to play on the worship team, run the sound board, or run the computer overhead projector system that none of the adults could figure out? Need someone to be the Childrens Church assistant, choir member, or actor for the Christmas play? Need someone to answer your bible-related questions (correctly), a youth group "core member", or nursery worker? Well, just call our family!
No joke… between the four of us kids, we did all that and more. I'm sure I forgot some because most of the things that were mentioned were things that I was "volunteered" for.
On top of that, we were expected to be perfect examples of "good Christian teenagers". In lieu of a PK to hold up as an example of how their children should behave, parents would use us. As bad as we may have had it, I still think that PKs face slightly more scrutiny. That said, no child should have to go through life afraid to try things and make mistakes because others are watching. I wish PKs were allowed to have more of a life with out the expectations of a whole church to carry on their shoulders.
I'm with LJ. The Chameleon should be up there… the kid with no personality because he/she never got a chance to find it.
I imagine PKs had similar pressure on them, but in smaller degrees. My pastor's kids were already grown when we were kids, so there was us. we sat on the front row, wore suits, and were perfect.
The Anon. last writer hit it well. Our church wasn't real small, but my fam was up to the teeth in christian ministry. Christian school, no real life outside church, and a solid, romantic infatuation with everything ungodly.
i gotta say as a PK myself i was a crazy kid in my early teens, never listen to my parents and get into all kinds of trouble, u get the picture.
But as i grew up i suddenly change one year, prob wen i was 19 and ofcos im not perfect, in fact quite far from it but for sure better than what i was before
PK here too. I guess I was mostly a "regular," but I always had some rebel undertones as I was such a people pleaser but then hated being in the "fishbowl" that is the life of a PK.
I agree with Ben though- an R-word for a Stunt Puller would be good b/c this was SO me. Perhaps it was a tamer version of the Rebel. I was the girl running around the church sticking red thumb tacks on noses of photos of new members who had joined our church….filling out false names on the visitors registration card and using the directory to randomly pick out numbers so that someone from the "Outreach Team" would call an unsuspecting member and ask to speak to "Ben Dover" or "Helen Highwater" (and yes, people actually fell for this). I had more practical jokes up my sleeve b/c it was much easier to focus on that than to focus on how much I started to resent being in the limelight…
I am not a PK, but this had me in tears. My senior pastor has 4 sons. Our family pastor has 2 sons, and our youth pastor has 2 sons (preschool and toddler). You've got me in trouble. I will never be able to look at those kids the same again.
Like Ben at the beginning of these comments (I never jump in here quickly enough to have the stamina to read all the ones that precede mine), I am a PK/MK. I'm just chiming in because of that pedigree, not because I can think of any interesting stories off the bat. Most of them happen to other types of pastor's kids–I was some mix of replica and regular . . .