Barnabas Piper, son of renowned author and pastor John Piper, shares his joys and struggles of being a pastor’s kid in his book, The Pastor’s Kid: Finding Your Own Faith and Identity, which was released on Tuesday.
Piper shared in a blog post that at first, he was unsure of whether other pastor’s kids actually shared similar struggles.
“I knew my own experiences and feelings towards being raised as a PK. I knew the difficulties and frustrations and pressures I had faced. But I didn’t know if my experience was normative or whether I was just weird,” he wrote.
Ultimately, he found that certain things were definitely shared among all pastor’s kids.
He shared the aspects that remained consistent through all of their experiences:
“I was expected to be better-behaved than other kids. (Sometimes even their parents expressed this.)
People looked to me to know the answers.
Everyone was watching all the time.
I had to be the good kid, to have my stuff together, to know what I believed and why I believed it.
I couldn’t express doubts or screw up in any way, but at the same time it was like people were just waiting for me to fail.”
Some of the topics that can be noticed in the table of contents include identity, high expectations, relationships between pastor and child, and the expectations that are placed upon them.
Pastors' children could empathize with Piper’s experiences and find healing in sharing the joys as well as brokenness through the text.
Although Piper shares much about the struggles of being a pastor’s kid, ultimately, Piper concludes his book with thankfulness.
“But now I want to express thanks. I want to say that PKs are blessed to have parents who devote their lives to serving Jesus… So thank you, pastors (and spouses). You have given your lives to serving Jesus and His church, and that is a blessing.”
