In the second part of this two-part series, pastors Derek and Cliff discuss a few practical ways pastors can cultivate a home where their kids love family and church life.
Transcript
Derek: Welcome to With All Wisdom, where we are applying biblical truth to everyday life. My name is Derek Brown and I am here today with Cliff McManis. We are both pastors and elders at Creekside Bible Church in Cupertino, California, and professors at the Cornerstone Bible College and Seminary in Vallejo, California. And today we want to continue a topic that we started last episode, specifically on how pastors can raise their children to love their home and church experience while their kids are growing up. But before we get to our topic for today, I want to encourage you to check out withallwisdom.org, where you will find a large and growing collection of written and audio resources that are designed to help you grow spiritually in your walk with the Lord Jesus. Now last episode, I introduced the topic by discussing a little bit of a book that had been written a few years ago by Barnabas Piper. Barnabas Piper is the son of John Piper, and the title of the book is The Pastor’s Kid, and in this book he relates his own experience as a pastor’s kid and talks about the challenging aspects of being a pastor’s kid. He also relates some of the positive experiences that he had, but he also integrates into the book quotes from other pastor’s kids, and they’re just little brief quotes explaining some negative aspect of their experience in the home, and maybe a positive experience. But what you start to get as you make your way through the book is that there just seems to be a lot of pastor’s kids who had a negative experience growing up, and I’ve heard stories that are similar to that.
And there just seems to be almost this kind of expectation that if you’re a pastor’s kid, while you’re growing up, your experience is going to be hard, uniquely challenging, difficult, and you possibly will become disillusioned with the church and disillusioned with Jesus and so on. And what we found in our last episode is actually, we talked to a young man, your own son, Cliff, who had a very different experience. His was very positive growing up in a pastor’s family. And so we want to talk more about that, because we don’t believe that this needs to be the anticipation or the expectation for a pastor’s kid. In fact, we think that there might be a bit of a myth out there that this is the experience of most pastor’s kids, or that it has to be. So we want to reengage this topic, and I want to turn it over to you. Cliff, I know you had a number of things you wanted to say, some good advice you got in the past, that helped you set a trajectory in your own family and your own ministry. So why don’t you tell us a few things that are on your mind?
Cliff: Yeah, I wanted to use our time together to do a couple of things, but mainly to encourage pastors out there and their wives, or maybe those in full time ministry. Maybe you’re a missionary. I didn’t grow up in the church, so I didn’t learn all the “Christianese” that’s out there that people know. That’s second nature. Like a PK, right?
Derek: Pastor’s kid?
Cliff: Yeah. I didn’t know what that meant. So even when I became a Christian and people were saying PK, I didn’t know what PK was. Then there was MK. I didn’t know what that was. And then I learned PK is a pastor’s kid and that meant something. There was a stigma that went with that that I was unfamiliar with. And then MK—same thing, missionary kid. And there were times, over and over again, repeated over the years, where I would hear about a PK or an MK and it was like, oh, you’re a PK. Oh, I’m sorry to hear that. How did you survive or how did you make it through? How tragic. Initially, I never understood what the implications were, but with time I came to realize that, oh, the stigma is that if you are born and raised in a pastor’s home and you’re a pastor’s kid, then you have unique trials, and more than likely, you’re going to regret having been raised in that home later on as you look back on life. And I just kept hearing that. And that was a pretty popular sentiment in the Christian world. And then I became a pastor, and then I had four children. And the years went by and I wasn’t experiencing any of these negative things with my kids in terms of them being rebels or them not liking church or our family, and they’re in elementary school, and then they’re in junior high and then they’re in high school, and I’m still not hearing this resistance.
And now my kids are in their 20s and getting married and having kids. And it was not long ago where someone in our church told me about the testimony of my son, who’s 24, at a church event where he just spoke up and said, yeah, I grew up in a Christian home, and as a matter of fact, a pastor’s home. And I loved it. And I had a great experience. He just said how he had heard about the PK curse and he didn’t know what that was. And then that was reported to me and I was like, wow, that’s cool. He’s never told me that. But that’s a blessing. That’s great to hear. That shatters the myth in some respects. Anyway, so we wanted to follow up on that. And that just got you and I talking and thinking and reevaluating that. Maybe pastors out there, pastors wives, even pastors kids, and missionary kids need a word of encouragement that the stigma doesn’t have to be true. You can be in ministry, serve God faithfully, do it according to biblical principles, live a balanced life, have children, and raise them in a way that they look back and they have fond memories of how they were raised. They have fond memories of the church, and all the while, while they’re growing up in your home, they’re loving life. They love the family. They’re living the fullness of life. They’re getting a broad range of experiences with the fullness of life. I think that’s something that can be achieved. And so those were just some of the things that I wanted to talk about and share. But that has been my experience. I’ve got four children who are now, like I said, in their 20s and beyond, and a couple married, and growing up, as I look back, from the time my kids were in my home, from the time they were born, until they were 18, not one time do I ever remember as a pastor any of my kids ever saying, oh, I don’t want to go to church, right? Or, I hate church, ever. So I guess I’m blessed. I don’t think it’s coincidence. As I look back, there were influential people in my life and in my wife’s life. As we were about to get married, as I was in seminary, when we first got married, before we had kids, and while our kids were young, where we were getting good advice, good mentorship and discipleship, especially from experienced and seasoned pastors. Practical advice of, you can be encouraged. Your kids can thrive in a pastor’s home and in church life, and they can enjoy it. And they can look back with fond memories. So probably there were a couple very influential ones. One was actually Pastor John MacArthur at Grace Community Church. I went to college with his children. He had four kids and all four of them, when they were in college, had nothing but positive things to say about their home life and their church life. And that was a great testimony because I went to Grace Church at that time and their four grown children were still going to the church of their own volition. They were serving in ministry. And then as the years went by, they got married and they were still committed to the church, and loving the church to this day. I was there recently, and the children still are at the church and serving and loving God and loving each other. So that was their experience—it was very fond and positive. And I mentioned in our earlier episode how I went to college with one of Chuck Swindoll’s children.
And they would talk a lot about their experience growing up in that very well-known pastor’s home. With five four siblings, I think, and they had nothing but fond memories. It was a loving home. They loved the church. They were still committed and going to church as a college student and didn’t have the PK syndrome hanging over their head. Being rebels and whatever. So that’s what I was exposed to—a lot of good examples. I was like, wow, all the pastor’s kids, at least that I know, love growing up in their church and home. But at the same time, we would hear stories of pastor’s kids who didn’t have that experience or testimony. They either regretted the church, they regretted family life, they walked away from the church later on in life and from some that are not known, to some who are very well-known. We have one of the Piper children who is very vocal and has his own podcast and speaks very negatively of Christianity.
Derek: The Piper that I bring up—Barnabas Piper—is not that one.
Cliff: So that good to clarify because one of them is still faithful, and the other pretty much basically has abandoned the faith. And it’s very sad. And as a grown man, he disparages the character and ministry of his dad, which is not honoring at all and a violation of the Bible. But obviously, you know, he’s disgruntled and looks back with a sour taste in his mouth about his church experience. Another one of our heroes, me and you, is Francis Schaeffer—a very influential man of God and apologist and Christian philosopher and Bible teacher. And Edith Schaeffer, a wonderful woman of God who was very influential and wrote a lot of great books. Then they had a son, Frankie Schaeffer, who did a lot of good stuff with his dad in his 20s and 30s and was pro-life and, you know, apparently a strong Christian and all that. And then, later on in life, turns out he abandons the faith. He just does a 180 and then begins to attack Christianity and then writes books on it and goes on CNN and publicizes it to the whole world. And he’s now pretty much an enemy of the church. And he wrote an autobiography that I actually read a few years ago. And I was sharing with you how sad it was, because all he’s doing is looking back and disparaging the home life that he was raised in, and accusing his parents of being legalistic and unloving and hypocritical.
And so it completely dishonors his parents and their memory. Very sad. And, you know, he’s kind of blaming all this hypocrisy on the fact that he was kind of like a poor kid. And we’ve seen others like that as well. So my word of encouragement is, it doesn’t have to be that way. You can be a pastor and a pastor’s wife and parent deliberately, according to the few biblical principles God has given to provide stability in a home where your kids are going to love your family and they’re going to love church life. And a couple influential principles that were shared with my wife and I early on that we found to be helpful—one actually was with John MacArthur. And he has said this over the years, even from the pulpit. And it always stuck in my mind from the time I heard it for the first time, before we even had children. But we were married. And he was saying how he had young children. And from the time they started to grow up and understand things and got interested in sports, particularly his boys, and they loved football in particular. And when they got into high school, he said, okay, I’ll make a deal with you. If you keep coming to my sermons, I’ll keep going to your basketball games and your football games.
And so they said, okay. So they actually kept that deal. And that’s the way he summarized it. But it says a lot. It’s not just a metaphor, because it was a reality and he was going to make himself available. He was going to be committed to what was important in the life of his kids at their young, impressionable age. They like sports and they’re good at it. And he’s going to be available. He’s going to be present. He’s going to be there as a dad. He’s going to support them in that. He’s going to enjoy it with them. He’s going to create a fond memory about it with them. And in turn they would reciprocate and support dad and what he does. And God’s called him to be a preacher, and he’s the pastor, and they’re going to come and listen to his sermons. And there was no guarantee of their salvation in that. But it was just a mutual commitment in terms of their love for one another and just laid a foundation that I thought was good in terms of a way they could honor their dad. Their dad can be involved in their life in a very practical, real way. So I never forgot that. And he repeated that over the years. And that was just kind of cool.
Derek: That’s really encouraging.
Cliff: So that’s what I did. It’s like, okay, I’ve got my four kids—two boys and two girls. And that’s one of the principles I live by. And, you know, I’m going to take an interest in what interests you, and I’m going to be involved in that as a hands-on dad. And you should probably come listen to my sermon. So that’s what happened. And so with my boys, it was basketball and I was available for their basketball games and driving them to their games and away games and was very involved and hands-on. A lot of time, quality time, was spent together in victory and in defeat and walking through all that together. And out in the parking lot driveway, rebounding for them as they’re shooting free throws just their whole life.
Derek: Well, you recently told me that one of the things you never regret doing was having all that one-on-one time with your kids. Because I was talking to you about, I can’t remember specifically what it was, but it’s something that I was doing with one of my kids, and it was taking a long time. And you said to me, one of the things you never regretted was spending that one-on-one time with the kids.
Cliff: Yeah. Quality time. Because that’s the story you hear so often is that, you know, the missing dads, the absent dad, or even the too-busy pastor dad who doesn’t have time for his kids, right? They’re interested in making them go to church all the time. But you don’t spend time doing stuff they want to do, right? That’s not fair. That exasperates them. And the Bible says, do not exasperate your children.
Derek: That’s a good point. It’s not just the deriding or speaking, you know, kind of the things you could say that are mean or unkind, but it’s the unwillingness to love them in these real, practical ways, like what you’re talking about with the things they enjoy.
Cliff: Yeah. And in terms of that quality time that you’re talking about, I look back now, and I’ve got fond memories of quality time. I had one-on-one time with each of my kids based on things they wanted to do, and how I would accommodate myself to their schedule or whatever. Like with my two boys, it was basketball. Okay, then we’ll have a lot of time doing that. But with one of my daughters, it was, when she was in high school, she joined the speech team. And I became her speech coach. I didn’t want to, but I did. And I look back and think, man, I’m glad I did that. And it was a lot of, we had to go to practices and speech meets around the state of California. And it was just one-on-one time with me and her. And it was wonderful. She looks back very fondly with that. And then my other daughter, too. I was her basketball coach her freshman and sophomore year in high school. And we had a lot of time together on the road and in the car driving around, and I wouldn’t trade that for anything. So, that was really helpful. Spending that quality time. Another helpful thing from a pastor who was older than me that I worked with—and he had three children, and they were just quality kids. And I admire that. My kids were in their diapers. His were in junior high and high school. And I thought, man, these kids are solid. They love their family. They love their dad, and they love their church, and they’re teenagers. And they’re excited about a MacArthur Study Bible at Christmas. That was at the top of their list. Like, how do you get a 12-year-old, 14-year-old, and a 17-year-old boy to have on the top of their Christmas list, first and foremost, a MacArthur Study Bible? You, as parents, did something right. And they did. And they were very deliberate in their parenting. But one thing that he shared with me when I was working—I was associate pastor. He was the lead pastor. We were both elders in the church. And this just struck me because I hadn’t thought of it or hadn’t read it anywhere. But, we were talking about parenting and strategies of parenting and maybe not so smart things that a lot of Christian parents do to try to protect their young children from the world, especially when they’re young, because they’re impressionable. And I guess it’s just natural for parents and Christian parents to want to protect your children from evil.
And that means protecting them from the world. So that means isolating them from the world, right? And you can quickly move towards legalism. They are to refrain from this and don’t do this and don’t do that. And then, that’s Colossians, saying true religion is not about “don’t.” Trying to isolate them from all the evil in the world. And then the pastor, my mentor, said, you know what, Cliff? We do need to protect our children from evil. And he just asked me a question. What is the greatest evil threat you need to protect your children from? And he put me on the spot. I don’t even know if I was able to answer the question, but he answered it for me. I will never forget it. And he said, it’s nothing out in the world. It’s not Hollywood. It’s not what they’re teaching in the public schools. It’s actually the evil sin that is inherent in your child’s heart that they were born with. That is the most imminent, dangerous, wicked, evil thing that you need to be aware of in your child’s life. So isolating them from the external world isn’t the priority.
Derek: Right.
Cliff: That’s legalism. It is cultivating godliness in their own heart, a sensitivity and a tenderness to the truth of Jesus Christ and the reality of the gospel at a very young age that revolutionized my parenting. I will never forget it. And he is so right. And that means, okay, now I need to parent to the heart and make sure they understand. And truth becomes the priority. Their understanding becomes the priority. And not behavioristic, mechanistic controls on their life like a legalist, because Jesus said to the Pharisees, you are hypocrites. And the way you operate with your behavioristic mechanistic, control, all you do is you produce another hypocrite who’s twice the son of hell as you. Literally, that’s what he said. And that’s true. Legalism begets legalists. And, I’ve seen that for decades now in misguided parenting, where they parent out of fear. Instead of, you know what? We need to concentrate on the heart. We need to pray for God’s mercy to be gracious. The only thing that can deal with the inherent, damning sin in their heart that separates them from God, their maker, the gospel of Jesus Christ, his mercy, his grace, the work of the Holy Spirit to enlighten them and their understanding.
And so I think that means that principle number one is teaching the gospel to your children from a very young age and making sure they really understand the gospel and what that means. And for me, as I look back, you used the word disillusionment earlier. And I think that’s the key word, because what happens is you can grow up in a Christian home as a pastor’s kid, and then not get the fullness of biblical truth of the gospel. And then you are raised with false expectations, false promises, and then later on as a teenager, college student, or later in life, you become disillusioned and felt like you didn’t get the whole truth. What happened? Wait. This was the promise that was made to me. And that’s why I think gospel clarity is so important. Meaning, one of the main things we need to communicate is that we are all completely, totally wicked and evil to the core. We were born that way, and apart from Christ, we’re always that way. And here’s the good news—that we can be saved through Jesus Christ as the God-Man who gave himself as a substitute for sin, willingly for sinners, and died in the place of sinners, and was punished by God the Father with the full fury of his wrath.
And Jesus absorbed that sin for us in accordance with the scriptures. And he died, was buried, and rose again for sinners. And we can even teach our young children that we’re sinful to the core. And that means Mommy and Daddy are sinful to the core. And apart from God’s grace, we’re not perfect. We’re going to mess up. We’re going to disappoint you. And when we’re inconsistent, tell us about it. Appeal to us. Let us know. And there’s going to be plenty of times we’re going to need your forgiveness. And you’re raising that child from the time they can even talk and understand all the way up through high school, so that when they’re 35, they can’t come back and say they were disillusioned, right? It’s like, no, I told you from day one that we were fallen. We were frail. We would make mistakes. And the only good person is Jesus. That’s it. Put your hope in no one else. Not in your parents. Not in trying to be good. Only in the grace of God.
Derek: I’ve heard from not just pastor’s kids, but just kids growing up in a Christian family, a few times—and this is surprising to me. But one of the things that really discouraged them was that they never remember their parents ever asking them for forgiveness. And that, like you just talked about, when parents do that, they’re demonstrating the reality of the gospel in their lives because they’re showing their kids, we’re sinners, too, and we’ll sin against you. And we need your forgiveness. And it’s amazing how when in our family, when we will go to our children and ask their forgiveness, first of all, how quickly they are ready to forgive, which is a beautiful thing. But how it just changes their whole demeanor and they just they seem to be at ease because mommy and daddy sin, and we will gather them around and we’ll say, if it needs to be one-on-one or all three of them, then we will ask for their forgiveness. And we think that is such an important piece to this. Parenting children so that they will love the gospel. They’ll see it and they won’t, Lord willing, become disillusioned. So that’s such a great reminder.
Cliff: Amen.
Derek: Well, Cliff, I think you probably could continue to give us a lot more to think about and chew on. But thank you for those excellent points and that counsel that you gave us that you received years ago. And I know you’ve been teaching me these things over the years, and I’m thankful for it because I’m a pastor with young kids. And so we hope this has been an encouragement to you. Just hearing that there are families that have had great experiences with being a pastor’s kid and kids who have enjoyed church and enjoyed growing up in their Christian family. Just hearing that is an encouragement and we hope it’s an encouragement to you and that these specific principles will also be helpful to you. And we are thankful that you’ve joined us today, and we would just encourage you to check out withallwisdom.org. We do have some articles there and some resources there on parenting. You can check them out. And until next time, keep seeking the Lord in His word.