The Pastor's Kid Quotes

“They want the PK to dress like a grandparent and behave like Jesus. But they also seem to wait for the time when the pastor’s daughter makes out and the son drinks beer.”
― Barnabas Piper, The Pastor's Kid: Finding Your Own Faith and Identity

“some people assume all is well, that the PK has it all together. They’re usually wrong; remember, PKs are as human as everyone else.”
― Barnabas Piper, The Pastor's Kid: Finding Your Own Faith and Identity

“Because being a PK can be very much like living in a pressure cooker. Even though we look just like the other kids and the ingredients are the same, our atmosphere is subtly but massively different. The ministry creates a pressure of expectation that is unlike any other. If all the other kids are cooking at 212 degrees (rather a challenge all its own), we are cooking at a scalding 250 pressurized degrees, and we are reaching our “done” point that much faster.”
― Barnabas Piper, The Pastor's Kid: Finding Your Own Faith and Identity

“Without grace there is no hope, but with it there is no shortage.”
― Barnabas Piper, The Pastor's Kid: Finding Your Own Faith and Identity

“some people assume all is well, that the PK has it all together. They’re usually wrong; remember,”
― Barnabas Piper, The Pastor's Kid: Finding Your Own Faith and Identity

“A child doesn’t know the call of his pastor father. All he knows is the effects it has on his life.”
― Barnabas Piper, The Pastor's Kid: Finding Your Own Faith and Identity

“And, of course, it is true for the wife and mother, watching, with tears, the drama play out between her son and husband, or bearing the weight of her daughter’s rejection.”
― Barnabas Piper, The Pastor's Kid: Finding Your Own Faith and Identity

“The moment we recognize our difficulties, no matter whose fault they are, we must own them and take steps to change them.”
― Barnabas Piper, The Pastor's Kid: Finding Your Own Faith and Identity

“The reality is that, in the context of relationship, without the connection of recreation and play, the serious message of the gospel becomes heavy, dry, and undesirable. Being”
― Barnabas Piper, The Pastor's Kid: Finding Your Own Faith and Identity

“short, he must exhibit every spiritual gift God intended to be dispersed throughout the entire church.”
― Barnabas Piper, The Pastor's Kid: Finding Your Own Faith and Identity

“That is part of why I wrote this book—to help PKs make sense of, sort through, and express those bottled-up frustrations and pains. What happens too often is bottling up, suppressing them until we get shaken just enough and the lid blows off and the hurt sprays everywhere.”
― Barnabas Piper, The Pastor's Kid: Finding Your Own Faith and Identity

“Folks in the church just glean things about the PK’s life from sermon illustrations (and pastors wonder why kids hate being used in sermons) or from a conversation here and a passing comment there.”
― Barnabas Piper, The Pastor's Kid: Finding Your Own Faith and Identity

“The call of the father is not the call of the child, but the ministry of the father creates an anvil-like weight on the child. He just feels the pressure of it. Even the best pastoral parents can’t protect their kids from this. And it is this pressure, in part, that drives so many PKs to break.”
― Barnabas Piper, The Pastor's Kid: Finding Your Own Faith and Identity