Sadly, some of our children don’t come to Jesus in repentance and faith but turn away in hostile rebellion.
A cocktail of external social influences can mix with internal trauma, hormones, and indwelling sin to stir up hostility to parents in general and Christianity in particular. Whilst we still love them dearly, such children bring us unspeakable heartbreak. And, in a ministry home, we and our children have the added pressure of having our congregation watching us. We feel the heaviness of our responsibilities to both our children and our church. O Lord, help us!
Our decision to write anonymously is because we are living this ourselves and the last thing our precious teenage child needs is to feel that they have been publicly named and shamed. We also know of other pastors and wives facing similar agony as their children are swept along with the pervasive godless culture including searching for new sexual and gender identities. And with us increasingly seen as the bad guys, even our words of truth can be easily weaponised against us. Perhaps we are still rare cases, but anecdotally it does seem like there has been a rise in the number of evangelical pastors affected. Here then are seven principles we daily seek to apply, and hope will help others as they parent such children in their ministry home.
