6 Keys to Raising Healthy PK’s

by Karen (Carlson) Fick

Editor’s Preface: When a ministry couple raises four children who also enter the ministry … who then go on to raise a third generation of ministers, somebody is obviously doing something right. In this article, Karen Fick reflects on how her parents (Richard and Ellen Carlson) shaped her heart for God’s service. She and her husband, Dan Fick, now have three grown children of their own: the wife of a senior pastor, an associate pastor, and a daughter whose husband is currently studying for a teaching ministry.

My parents did not attend Bible school until they were married and already raising four children. As their oldest, I was already in seventh grade when we headed for Seattle Bible Training School. Thus I had a “ringside seat” from which to observe the changeover to ministerial life.

It may surprise you to hear me say that basically, nothing changed in our home! When Dad became a minister, he and my mother were pretty much the same as they’d always been within the congregation. Our family kept showing up for every service, actively participating in various parts of church life from children’s services to choir and orchestra. We still had missionaries and evangelists in our home for meals-and oftentimes for several days or months if needed. We helped in whatever task needed to be done, from making new hymnals open properly to cooking and serving food and washing dishes for the annual summer conference. Basically, the only thing that changed was the location of Dad’s office-and the amount of his paycheck!

I took it all in stride. This new life was not something strange or alien. It was a continuation of what I already knew, serving the Lord with heart and mind and soul and strength.

I found it odd when we returned to our old church in California the next summer. Suddenly I couldn’t seem to fit back into the group of girls my age. Finally, I asked one of them if I had done something wrong or had hurt someone. She responded, “No, it’s just that things are different now.”

“What’s different?” I wanted to know.

“Well, you know,” she explained, “now your dad is a pastor.” Oh!

A lot of years have passed since that day, but I still embrace the ministry as a great privilege and calling. In raising our own children (who are now busy raising ten grandchildren!) my husband, Dan, and I found that the following six keys served us well.

1. Teach Them that “Fishbowl Living” Is Not Limited to Pastors’ Families
There are expectations no matter what the parent’s job is. The children of a doctor deal with a fishbowl existence. The child whose father or mother is a lawyer deals with a fishbowl existence. If a child’s parent is a teacher, people expect the child to do well in school. All kinds of occupations, especially in the professions, carry a certain load for the associated family members. This is not peculiar to the ministry.

The whole fishbowl paradigm has gotten more emphasis than it deserves. The more we talk about it, the more it makes our kids feel strange and even presumed upon.

I got a new appreciation for this when our youngest daughter began kindergarten. I would walk the children to school, and then I began walking home with one of the other moms. We walked and talked together for over a month, sharing many topics but avoiding what our husbands did for a living.

We decided one day that we would reveal this information. Both of us worried aloud that our growing relationship might be affected once the news came out. Promising to stay friends with one another, we took the plunge.

“My husband is a minister,” I confessed.

She smiled with relief, and then admitted, “My husband works for the IRS!”

Needless to say, we both had a good laugh and continued our friendship despite what our husbands did. We both were set free from a set of unrealistic assumptions that day.

2. Emphasize OUR Standards, Not “Theirs”
Yes, church people have expectations about how they think preacher’s kids should be. But I think that for our children, the most important issue should be our expectations. What do we feel it means to live out our faith within the family? This matters far more than what the deacons think.

If our children are confident of our love and know our expectations, then teaching them to live within our boundaries will help them to develop an appropriate attitude to life in the pastor’s home. Any Christian’s home should be built upon the principles set forth in God’s Word. If you are struggling with expectations as a pastoral family, maybe it is time to give your home a checkup and see if some principles need to be adjusted to God’s Word.

I will always be grateful that when my parents entered the ministry, the standards of our home didn’t really change. We just went on being Christians the way we had before.

3. Trust the Lord for Finances
The biggest challenge of raising PKs is probably financial. It’s admittedly tough to cover all the bases: clothing, braces for the teeth, sports equipment, piano lessons … and the list goes on. We found, serving in Southern California, that we often had to pay more for our daughters to be modestly dressed. Short shorts were always on sale, it seemed, while appropriate shorts cost more. Longer dresses cost more too.

However, we chose to make our complaints to the Lord, not the kids. We tried very hard not to cause our children to resent the ministry because of finances. Somehow he made our monies stretch. When our daughter needed braces, the orthodontist graciously blessed us with a discount. Halfway through her two-year course of treatment, the Lord moved us on. We wondered what would happen when we arrived at our new place. Our orthodontist told us that many dentists do not like to take up where another has left off, or they will charge the full fee to complete the work.

He did give us the name of a dentist to approach in the new area-and once again the Lord was faithful. The new orthodontist was a Christian and was very gracious to take up where the other had left off, even commending the former orthodontist for his work. He was generous with the financial aspect as well. This was a great witness to our daughter of a God who was concerned about her every need.

Music lessons were a stretch for us-but as we scraped together the money, we tried to view it as not only an investment in our children but also an investment in the kingdom of God down the road. In fact, that has proven true. By the time our oldest daughter went to Seattle Bible College, we had joined the staff there, and she blessed us all by playing for chapel services and other ministries. In this way we were recipients of our own investment. She now leads worship in the church her husband pastors, singing and playing the piano, and she directs the special music of both adults and children as well. We stand back and praise God for his faithfulness in providing those lessons over the early years.

Another aspect of the financial challenge has to do with whether the pastor’s wife can afford to be available for ministry work, be it leading in women’s ministry or going with her husband to a hospital call or an emergency situation. Even though many women want to be actively involved, they find it necessary to be employed to help with the finances. It is often hard for a pastor to deal with a financial need without sounding to the church board like he is a money grabber.

Whatever the realities, this is not an issue to be hashed out in front of the kids. The Lord is our ultimate provider, and he chooses to work through his people. Many of them are struggling with the same issue, in fact. God has given women a great task to be keepers of the home, and we need to support not only pastors’ families but also those within our congregations who choose this route.

I remember driving home from church one evening with our three children, then all in their teenage years. We got to talking somehow about at-home mothering. Each began expressing their desires. Not one of the three expressed any unhappiness about the way the ministry had or had not provided for our family. The girls each said they wanted to be stay-at-home moms when they would have children, and our son said he hoped to find a wife who would want the same thing.

I said nothing out loud, but inside my heart was going, “YES!” My next sentence was, “Oh, Lord, it will take a miracle in this day and age for that to happen.” Well … two of our three children are now experiencing the fulfillment of their wish, and the third is working toward this goal in the near future. My prayer for them these days is that the Lord will continue to provide for them so that they not only benefit from this joy and privilege but that the grandchildren will continue to be blessed by this as well.

4. Protect Your Children from Unnecessary Information
For Dan and me it was extremely important not to discuss difficult issues regarding parishioners in front of the children. This was true not only when they were young but especially later as teenagers. We did not want the sometimes petty situations, as well as those of great concern, to cause them to become bitter against God or the family of God.

Sometimes their friends’ parents or extended family members would be upset with the pastor. Every pastor knows that many things said against you are only partially true, if not totally false. These are issues you need to handle by yourself or with the counsel and help of your spouse. But we must be careful that our children do not take up an offense on our behalf. When our children take up an offense, it can affect their lives not only physically or emotionally but can even be a catalyst to cause them to deny their faith. God will give us his grace to deal with those who come against us. Leave the kids out of it.

5. Handle Discipline Privately
This is a good rule for any parent, whether in the ministry or not. We do not need to add stress to our children’s lives by dealing with issues in front of their friends and church family. None of us likes to be embarrassed, so why would we choose to embarrass our precious children?

God deals with us privately in our hearts and minds, and only when we refuse to face issues does he sometimes choose to make our issues known. But even so, he deals with us in love. I can think of no better demonstration of love to our children than to deal with them in like manner.

Use the same technique with your PKs that you would use with a parishioner. You would want to make sure that you have all the facts from everyone involved in the situation before you took action. Too often ministry parents have a tendency to accept the report from Brother or Sister So-and-So on what they saw or heard about our child without asking our child what actually happened. Even the best of Sunday school teachers do not have eyes in the back of their head to see all, or ears to hear all that took place. We would do well to say, “Thank you for bringing this to my attention, but I also need to hear from my child.”

6. Guard Family Time Diligently
One of the great benefits of being a PK is having a parent who can adjust his days off. But this flexibility can turn into a curse if the minister robs his wife and children by not scheduling special days together as a family. Yes, when a parishioner calls in the middle of the night for an emergency, the pastor’s “job” is immediately affected, and sometimes the whole family is affected by such a call. But I think it is very important for the minister to remember that although he has received a call to ministry, his children have not. It is critical that the minister’s own children do not feel neglected because of ministry, becoming like the shoemaker’s children in the fable who had no shoes of their own.

When the phone rings just as a family activity is scheduled to begin, pastors have to resist the urge to say, “I’ll be right there.” A far better response is, “Well, I have an appointment just now, but we can certainly set a time to get together with you soon.” The person on the other end of the line doesn’t need to know the current appointment is with his wife or a child! I will always appreciate my father’s ability to make that distinction.

Of course, we knew as a family that true emergencies (an accident or someone’s death) would come ahead of a scheduled family time. However, just because something is an “emergency” to another person does not make it an emergency for the pastor’s family.

One of the ways you can help your family is to take the school holidays and declare them family days. Remember, congregation members have many opportunities to be together with their families during church services and events. The pastor’s family most often does not share this same privilege. School holidays are an occasion to make up for these losses.

And sometimes, family time can blend with ministry to the benefit of both. A benefit of living in the pastor’s home is the opportunity to meet men and women of God serving in a variety of ministries and hearing how God has provided for them during difficult times. Pastor’s children are privileged to have a keen view of our all-powerful, all-knowing, ever-present God being actively involved in people’s lives. This can encourage their faith in unique ways.

I will always remember the day when missionary Hubert Mitchell came to our home long ago, before my dad even entered full-time ministry. I had been entranced at church with his famous story of God providing a nail in a can of mandarin oranges so he could illustrate the Crucifixion to people on the island of Borneo. But I also remember just as vividly how this man filled his plate and then ate at our dining room table.

Curiously, my sister, Shari, is now a missionary on that very island of Borneo!

This is a Joy, Not a Burden
I truly believe that one of the critical reasons our children have felt the Lord leading them into ministry is because we (Dan and I) as well as their grandparents have sought to portray the life of a pastor or pastor’s wife as an incredible joy and privilege. My parents never gave us any actions, words or thoughts that made the idea of ministry something to avoid. They rather caused us to see that God’s call was a precious treasure.

How about you? What keys have helped you in raising healthy Pastors’ Kids?

The Ficks now live in Moreno Valley, California.