When I was 8, my father accepted a call to a district that had no church school. Because I was ready for second grade and my brother to begin first, Dad started a school. It consisted of a teacher and 10 students who met in an old roadhouse on the grounds the conference was developing into a junior camp/camp meeting site.
For me, growing up in a preacher's home meant having no question about where I would be educated. From first grade on through college, I was in one of the church's schools.
Being a preacher's kid meant many other things to me. It meant being heavily involved in church activities--the pastor needed his family's support.
And so I began Ingathering when I was 5. I remember the cars with record players on the front seats and horns on the roof pouring out the sounds of the King's Heralds Christmas records. Later there were the collection containers with built-in music boxes that played "Silent Night" and had a battery-lit candle on top. Some nights hardly anyone else showed up--but the pastor's family was always there.
Our involvement in church activities meant being at all the potluck and church socials, evangelistic meetings and special services. It also made me feel deeply that this is my church. It's my home, my extended family.
Growing up in a preacher's home meant rushing around Sabbath mornings so we wouldn't be late for church. It meant never sitting with Dad during the worship service. It meant waiting in the car while Dad made a pastoral call on the way home from church. At times it meant eating a picnic lunch (in the church basement, if it was winter) and then attending a second church on Sabbath afternoon.
It also meant the fun of getting to go to camp pitch and workers' retreats. The camaraderie among pastors, conference staff, and their families was great. These people shared our lifestyle, our concerns and commitments. Here the conference president felt free to shoot off firecrackers with the kids. And frogs appeared in the beds of workers of all ranks.
Being a PK meant being at camp meeting. It meant having missionaries and denominational leaders in our home; seeing firsthand a larger picture of the church and service for God; seeing the personal side of people influential in the church.
It also meant knowing from the start that the church's leaders, ministers, and members are human--that they have the same good and bad points as do other people. It meant growing up with a realistic picture of the people most closely involved in the church, which may have saved me some of the disillusionment some people feel when they begin to know the organization and its leaders well.
Being a PK meant having a dad who was gone most evenings. It meant living far from our relatives. It meant calls and moves and leaving friends. But it also meant the excitement of seeing and living in new places. It meant learning to meet people, to make friends easily.
I think growing up in a pastor's family offered some protection from exposure to temptations that other Adventist kids faced. Our schoolmates hesitated to involve us--the pastor's kids--in questionable activities.
Because we were part of the pastor's family, my parents expected us to uphold high standards. But we knew that they did not have those expectations just because we were PKs. They were committed to those standards anyway. I don't remember that their expectations caused me to resent my role.
Finally, for me, being a PK meant having a dad who was a man of many talents. I learned that a person could do just about anything he set his mind to. (My dad was one of those pastors who built church buildings as well as member' ship.) It meant growing up in a home where the male role model was a reader, a man of books. And more than that, a man interested in spiritual things, a reader of the Bible and the Spirit of Prophecy.
In my case--and in many others--it meant having as a father a man of commitment, of dedication, a man whose life was consistent with his profession.
This editorial will appear in June, the month in which we celebrate Father's Day. I do not intend it to be simply a pat on the back for my dad or an exercise in nostalgia. Rather, I hope it offers some assurance that a preacher's home--your home--can be a great place in which to grow up. That it can be a privilege to have a pastor as a parent. --David C. Jarnes.
