As a second career pastor (serving now for a bit over five years), with now four teenage children, I have to say - I have been concerned about what being a pastor's kid would do to them. They didn't grow up with me as a pastor. There was five years of seminary before I became a pastor (including two years of travel in there, which was an incredible adventure) - so this has been a large part of their life.

When I started with my current call, a few things I did was insist that the church had no expectations for my family. My kids weren't going to be salvation of the youth program - they might not even participate in it. They already had established relationships and friends. I wasn't about to force "friendships" at church with kids they didn't even go to school with, or see any other time outside of church. My wife would not be expected to do anything either. Turned out she became the organist because we had an opening, but she has good boundaries about that. I've had people in the church who say things like "I don't feel like I know your wife very well, she doesn't come on visits with you." No kidding. It's not her job to do pastoral visits. And you know where she sits every week (at the organ bench), you are welcome to go say hi if you like. Often this is just people prying for information about our family or some other kind of gossip and I don't oblige.

My family has seen the good parts of church and the crappy parts. They have seen the stress. They know when I'm suffering because of something that happened or what someone said and it takes me time to recover. I really try to make sure I don't weigh the kids down with what's happening at church. And my wife certainly knows more because she is married to me.

I know there are some families that have a tradition of kids becoming pastors when their parent has been a pastor. I don't wish that on my children. If they are called to it, I will of course support them, but it's not something that I hope they choose.

I pray for all of you PKs out there.