Well, I'm sure we all know of a godly mother and father who raise their kids in a loving Christian home to fear and worship the Lord,

but now one of their children has walked away from the faith, or maybe they're just not interested in the things of God,

or maybe they've gone as far as to publicly deconstruct and rage against the biblical values of their upbringing.

Today's question is about that with specific application in a situation when it's a child of a

pastor or ministry family. So Paul, what are the specific ways that pastors can protect their

kids from disillusionment with the faith, and then

how can churches help contribute to the raising of pastors kids?

When a child is in a Christian family, a Christian minister family is bitter and jaded and maybe walks away from Christianity.

It's a heartbreaking thing for ministry parents.

But I think it's so, so important for ministry parents to understand that life for a ministry child, a child and a

ministry family can be hard. First is the constant busyness. Ministry doesn't tend to be like a nine to five job

with predictability. There's a lot of unpredictability in ministry. Second, it feels for that

child like they're seemingly always on camera because they're part of that ministry family.

And it's often that people look at children in a minister family with A, on realistic expectations,

and B, with judgmental assessments.

So a child negatively impacted by this

needs compassion, needs understanding, needs patience,

needs, if possible, wise understanding biblical counsel.

And the counseling needs to help the child distinguish between who God is,

the message of the Bible, what grace is, what the life of faith looks like, and the failures

of the church and the ministry family.

God will never fail, but your parents may.

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