Growing up with a parent as a pastor can be rough. It becomes a bit more rough when both are. This is an article to give some of my background. Growing up with both of my parents as pastors was hard, however, it had some upsides to it. These are some of the stories of growing up as a double pastor child.
You are used as an illustration for sermons. So you learn to be careful about what they know about, unless you want to be used for their sermon about the Ten Commandments next week. It could even be something you said or did as a little kid, and you don’t even remember that ever happening. So the whole church knows what is going on in your life, so it’s on some level reality television but you do not get any money or fame for it. So you go about for the following week or so with random people coming up and talking about you, like they know you. During the whole time they are talking to you are just thinking "who is this? Is this Ms. Johnson? No no no, she’s out of town. Mrs. Smith! No, wait she is in the nursing home. Ms. Hult, that is who this is." While they are talking about this or that to you when you are eating out with a friend. Sometimes they will come up and see what you are doing this day or that day, because they need people to work. Which is if you get asked at all if you can do it.
Helping around the church is something you tend to do a lot of if you are a pastor's kid. It sometimes means that you lose your Friday night or a random day to helping with a project. As a son of the pastor I tended to help with more physical tasks, such as helping someone move, building something, or playing outside with kids. However, I still helped out in the nursery and the kitchen. However it ended up doing some favors, since you gain skills that can help later on and if you go to a school that awards the Silver Cord, you can earn it. Which does not help with the stereotypes that can come your way.
The two most common are either you are a goody-two-shoes or horrible human being. You will always be asked what you do and be judged hard for hard for what you do. Along with people will sometimes think that you live in the church since they never see you anyplace else. Yes, everyone, there is a secret room in every church for pastor kids to live in. However, the stereotypes do come in handy. They can, however, make for a good surprise or of getting out of doing something.
This is just a small look into what it is like to be a pastor’s kid. The good and the bad of growing up with both parents being pastors.
