I cannot stress that point enough—if parents don’t exemplify the character of Christ, they cannot expect their kids to. You can teach them with your words, but they are watching how you treat your wife, your husband and your other children.
Additionally, PKs often feel that they’re not a priority and that they are sidelined because of pressing ministry issues. Pastors have to build boundaries around their personal lives in order to keep their family safe. Keep as much work at work as possible. Your home should be a retreat, not another office.
2. Sheltered kids.
I see this a lot among pastors’ families. The parents are terrified of their children going bad, so they lock the doors and bolt the shutters. If nothing bad can get in, then their children will be good.
That’s absurd.
Sheltering does one of two things. It will either keep kids so insulated from the world that they won’t be able to function as competent adults, or (and this is what I see the most) it will drive kids right into the open arms of worldliness.
My parents did a good job with exposing me to the world, even though I was homeschooled.
They gave it to me in doses, and I think that makes sense because they taught me how to deal with the world in small steps. They warned me that people were ungodly, that I needed to stay close to God and my Christian friends. I did just that, and now I’m fine.
This gentle, slow exposure to secular culture is what has worked for all of the well-adjusted pastors’ kids I know.
