Confessions of a Pastor's Daughter

[Gail]

The article speaks for itself

Quote:

We all wear masks, and the time comes when we cannot remove them without removing some of our own skin,” says Canadian novelist André Berthiaume. As a pastor’s kid I appreciate this statement, maybe more than most. I’ve always heard that pastors' kids “have issues” and tend to wash out of the Church. What I haven’t heard is intelligent discussion on why this might be true. This is my story of why I left the Church, why I came back and the skin I lost in the process.

Growing up a pastor’s kid was somewhat of a beautiful contradiction. At an early age I learned that Sabbath is supposed to be a day of rest. But my experience was that Sabbath was the day Dad was never at home and we as a family worked hardest. I experienced being a part of some amazing churches, where people were genuine and God really did work. But I also watched as a group of church members attempted to destroy the people I loved most because of church politics and power. I was told I was valuable, but, as the pastor’s daughter, I felt crushing judgement everywhere I turned in our community.

As a teen, I struggled with the feeling that I was not as important as everyone else because I was the pastor's kid, the given, the good kid who should know all the faith stuff already. We had to bend over backwards for "the lost", but I was the “found of the found”, and the expectations were impossibly high. I tried desperately to be the perfect pastor's daughter but no matter what I did, I always fell short.

By the time I was 15, I had come to the conclusion that if I wasn't good enough for church I wasn't good enough for God. By the time I started university I could recite the textbook Adventist answers with the best of them, but under the smile and the “Happy Sabbaths” I was angry and desperate—silently struggling with addiction and an eating disorder.

When I graduated from university, all I wanted was out. Not from my family, who I admired and loved, but from all the pressures of church life that surrounded them. So I ran as far as I could—all the way to Denmark as, ironically, a student missionary. I enjoyed being where no-one knew me, my family or that I was a pastor’s kid. For the first time in my life I was anonymous and felt safe from judgement. I was free.

What I didn't know is that while Denmark is one of the richest countries in the world, it has among the highest teenage abortion, suicide and alcohol consumptions rates. And the normal family? There was no such thing! Working at Vejlefjordskolen, an Adventist boarding academy, those statistics became real as I interacted with kids dealing with trauma. But unlike Papua New Guinea where I had spent the first four and-a-half years of my life, no-one needed any material stuff in Denmark. Many of these kids had more brand name items than I could ever imagine owning and my shallow textbook Adventist answers were useless. What they needed was what I didn’t have myself: real love, real acceptance, real forgiveness and real grace.

What do you say to a kid who describes their weekend with: “It was terrible—my dad just went to prison after I testified against him in court.” What do you say to the 14-year-old threatening suicide after having an abortion the weekend before? My religion had equipped me to explain the 2300 days, not to provide genuine love when someone had experienced a profoundly traumatic day.

After a particularly distressing night I asked one of the other student missionaries: “Why do you believe in God?” Her answer wreaked havoc with my brain for months: “Because God is love and without Him, without His love, I've got nothing to give anyone.” I desperately wanted something to give these kids, but at the same time I wanted nothing to do personally with a God who I saw as harsh, judgemental and condescending; or a Church that I saw as ruthless, unforgiving and two-faced. But after months of fighting with myself and the calling of the Spirit, I decided to give God another try.

It's been a little over a year since that day. I won't lie and tell you that everything is perfect now, because it's not. I still struggle with the consequences of past decisions, there is pain I still have to work through and there are churches I’m not sure I'll ever be able to walk back into again. As they say, “pastors' kids have issues and many of them leave the Church”. It may be because of what we've seen, because we don't feel supported, because we don't believe that we are good enough or because we're sick of the two-facedness of it all. But often—maybe most often—we leave simply because we've been incredibly hurt.

Some of us come back, some of us don't. The reason I came back is because I met God. I met a God who is bigger than our Church. A God whose love is big enough to take our hurt, our anger and resentment and say “I love you. I accept you. You are enough”. I saw what His love did in the lives of students. I know personally that He took an angry pastor's kid from New Zealand and showed her that she is loved, her story is important and His grace really is enough.

To paraphrase the apostle Paul: “God's grace; it's all you and I need. His strength truly comes into its own in my weakness." And once I realised that; once I let go and trusted that He knows me far better than I know myself, I could quit focusing on my imperfection and begin appreciating the gift. It became a case of Christ’s strength moving in on my weakness. That’s why I can be so sure that every detail in my life can and will be worked into something good. Because these limitations that cut me down to size—abuse, accidents, opposition, bad breaks—I can just let Christ take over! And so the weaker I get, the stronger I become in Him.

So, here I am, a pastor’s kid cliché; only I came back—missing skin and all. And now, next time you hear talk about the trouble with pastors' kids, you’ll have an insight into maybe why some of us are troubled. One of the most poignant expressions of my prayer to Jesus today, is put this way:

“I have not much

To offer You

Not near what You deserve

But still I come

Because Your cross

Has placed in me my worth.”

—Unashamed by Starfield

Rebekah Rankin is working while studying for her Masters in International and Community Development at Deakin University, Melbourne.

[phkrause]

Awesome, Praise the Lord.

[BobRyan]

No child will go to heaven based on the faith of their parent. With each life - the process starts from scratch. The person must choose the New Birth. Each person must choose eternal life and the Gospel New Covenant that "Writes the Law on the mind and heart" Heb 8.

It matters not if one is Pastor's daughter or not.

And once we accept Christ and are born-again - then each person must choose for himself to "Take up the cross and follow Christ" Matt 10. No amount of pastors-family or Elders-family insulation can get us out of that "next step".

The foundation of God's Law is Love for others (Lev 19:18) and Love for God (Deut 6:5) which means that the newborn 1 day old Christian - must pray for an opportunity to share the new truths they have just picked up. As we share - we find that we have prayer projects because those we share with will seldom embrace new truth right out of the gate. Memorizing texts for school projects is not even close to actually sharing with someone who is not a Christian or a Christian but not an Adventist Christian.

By coming into contact with the needs of those around us - and making others a matter of our own prayer life - we grow in Christ. And at each step our beliefs our knowledge of the "One" who IS the "Way the TRUTH and the life" who calls Himself "The Word of God" Rev 19, John 1 will be put to the test.

There are loads of church folks, family and neighbors and school buddies ready and waiting to put our faith to the test as soon as we agree to share it.

Christian parents can be in a position to inoculate their children against the Gospel by exposing the children to the Gospel and then demonstrating in the home life that it makes little difference.

Parents - what bible studies with non-SDAs are your children seeing you engage in ? and in what spirit do they see you do it? What opportunity do your children have to do the same? To ask questions? to explore the answers?

Or do you teach your children that the Bible cannot be trusted? That Evolutionism is true - and historically accurate but the Word of God is not? (Or do you simply settle for sending them to one of the few SDA schools that will teach them that?)

Do you teach your children that the Bible is not the Word of God? That Ellen White's writings cannot be trusted as inspired by God? That "doubt is a virtue"??

Parents - what about the TV that you watch? The Sports that you watch? Is it all approved of God and helpful to your children? Are they now out of control in those very same areas?

Parents - do you gripe and complain about mistreatment by fellow church members to your children - no matter how unjust that treatment may be? Is that blessing your children or is "the fire spreading" due to what you are doing with it?

Parents - do you treat your children each day as if they were a gift a present from God and that you are on the hook to make sure that God gets to spend all of eternity with the gift given to you - such that you are a good steward of that which has been placed in your hands?

Eve complained about the harsh treatment they got from God - in front of her children. That action also resulted in consequences.

Satan's ability to tempt, deceive allure attract is many fold today greater than it was in the days of the early Church. Matt 7 says many are on the wide road to destruction and few on the narrow path to eternal life. Rev 3 gives no commendation at all to the 7th church - the church of laodicea (by contrast to all the other churches in all the ages). With all this against them - your children need you to stand against the current of popular whining church member against church member, popular compromise, popular doubt and lack of practical Christianity in the home. Will you help the next generation or will you settle for barely making it into the pearly gates yourself smelling of smoke and eyebrows singed?

in Christ,

Bob