Clergy Wellbeing Down Under
Welcome to the official first podcast of the Centre for Effective Serving, a research and consulting organisation focused on vocational wellbeing, burnout prevention, and training. In Season 1 we are focussing on Clergy Wellbeing Down Under. In Season 2 we looked at how ministry kids locally and on the mission field are doing.
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In each episode we delve into the latest research and resources developed by our team of experts, who are dedicated to enhancing leadership wellbeing and fostering a supportive environment for leaders to thrive. Our podcast provides valuable insights, evidence-based strategies, and practical tips to help leaders and their families maintain their well-being, improve their resilience, and prevent burnout.
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Clergy Wellbeing Down Under
The Pastor's Kid Part 1 with Barnabas Piper
Join me, Valerie Ling, as I sit down with Barnabas Piper, author, pastor and son of theologian John Piper, for a candid and helpful conversation about being a pastor's kid. Barnabas shares his personal story of navigating life as a pastor's kid, where the blend of public scrutiny and private faith creates a unique tension of identity and independence.
Get the full report of our survey findings here
"Pastors' kids are often burdened by others' expectations, but there is a wonderful solution, both at home and in the church: grace. In this revised, refreshed version of Barnabas Piper's best-known book, the author candidly shares his own experiences as son of pastor and bestselling author John Piper, offering a challenge to our churches and to the families at their very heart: how to care for pastors' kids and allow them to find their own faith and identity. Foreword by John Piper." Quoted from The Wandering Bookseller where you can get the copy of Barnabas Piper's book - The Pastor's Kid: What it's like and how to help.
Podcast Disclaimer:
Please be aware that the opinions and viewpoints shared on this podcast are personal to me and my guests, and do not represent the stance of any institution. This podcast aims to present findings for open discussion and dialogue, inviting listeners to engage critically and draw their own conclusions. While the content serves informational purposes, it is not a substitute for professional advice. Thank you for joining me on this journey of exploration and conversation!
Hey there, I'm Valerie Ling and I'm a clinical psychologist and I will be your host for Season 2's episodes titled the Ministry Kids' Well-Being Down Under Episodes. We asked 100 ministry kids how they are doing. These are Australian kids who are either serving with their family locally or serving abroad on the field. If you haven't already done so, I recommend catching up on episode one, where I share the main findings from our survey. Every episode, I'll talk to someone whom I hope will be able to help us understand and unpack what the kids told us. I hope you enjoy it. Let's do it Well. Hello, Barnabas, I'm Valerie.
Speaker 2:It's nice to meet you.
Speaker 1:It's really nice to meet you. It's an incredible connection from me buying your book, reading it a couple of years ago actually and having the seed planted to go. This is really important. People need to know about this stuff. So, so great to actually have you chatting with me.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I had a chance to look through the research that that you guys had done and was really uh impressed but also just blown away by the similarities between what I wrote. I mean, I wrote that book I guess it's been over 10 years ago now and uh, and, and then what you were finding and, and you know, I obviously corresponded almost entirely with people in the United States and you were largely people in Australia but scattered around some, and yeah, the similarities were so remarkable to me.
Speaker 1:I couldn't believe it. I mean, and I think what you've just said there, you wrote this book 10 years ago and this is you interviewing a bunch of'm assuming adults who were kids, but these are adult perspectives in your book it was a whole range.
Speaker 2:So I mean, obviously, a lot of it was drawn on my experience, having grown up as a pastor's kid. But then I, uh, at the time I wrote it, social media was kind of fledgling. I basically just put out a link to I think it was a google form, something like that, and I just said, hey, I would love to hear from anybody who's a pastor's kid. If you'd be willing to fill out this and it was a non-scientific survey, just sort of me posing questions, essentially wanting to find out am I crazy? Is my experience normative or does it sit way outside the norm? And I think I had 40 or 50 people respond and they were as young as 17 or 18 and then as old. As you know, people in their in their 60s or 70s who had grown up as pastors get so some who were in the thick of it and others who had moved out of that years prior.
Speaker 1:So, barnabas, I guess we can scientifically conclude that these findings are timeless, not geographically constrained.
Speaker 2:So it would seem.
Speaker 1:But before we jump into it, I'd love to just to get to know you a little bit, Barnabas. So what do you do when you're not doing the ministry thing?
Speaker 2:When I'm not doing the ministry thing, I have a wife and three kids, and so that is where the majority of my time and enjoyment goes. So I have two older daughters who are teenagers from my first marriage, and then I got remarried several years ago and we just had a son a few months ago. So we have a child in college and a child in diapers, and that's what I spend the majority of my time doing is talking to one on the phone about college challenges and the other one, you know, cleaning up messes and things like that, but both of which I thoroughly enjoy. It's really joyful. We live in the Nashville area, nashville, tennessee and so it's a beautiful place to enjoy being outside. There's a lot of wonderful live music and we just we enjoy the city and getting out. Obviously, with a little one, we do that less than we did several months ago, but yeah, it's, it's. It's a largely family oriented life right now.
Speaker 1:Do you have a lot of fun, Barnabas.
Speaker 2:I sure I try to. I one of the things that I that I came to a conviction of while writing the Pastor's Kid and other things, was that a lot of pastors aren't very good at having fun with their families and sort of being the head fun maker. So I love humor, I love fun, I love to you know, laughing with my family is one of the best things in life but also with friends and just sort of, yeah, just turning things into lighthearted fun if we can. So, yeah, we do our best and we have a good time into lighthearted fun if we can.
Speaker 1:So yeah, we do our best and we have a good time. Now, it doesn't seem to have frightened you from bringing your own kids into ministry. You wrote the book. You Live the.
Speaker 2:Life. It terrified me. I kind of accidentally ended up in ministry. It certainly wasn't my intended plan. So I actually, when I got out of college, I went into the publishing industry for about 13 or 14 years and that's when I wrote the Pastor's Kid. So I was writing it as somebody who did not intend to go into vocational ministry. It was Christian publishing, so it was kind of in support of the church, but not serving at a church.
Speaker 2:And then about six years ago, the Lord and his great sense of humor rearranged things and moved my heart and moved the church that I was attending to call me as one of the pastors there, and so it was actually a point of real serious consideration for me. What will the effect be on my two daughters at that point? Because they were late elementary, middle school age and I remembered those days really vividly and remembered a lot of the good things. They loved our church I love the church I grew up in but also a lot of the challenges and I thought so. I had conversations with them.
Speaker 2:I had conversations with the other pastors who were already serving how is this affecting your family? And prayed a lot about it. And so, yeah, it very strongly affected me. It didn't deter me in the end because it was clearly the right move and our church has been so kind to us and to the other pastors' families. They treat us well. But I still have conversations with my kids where they experience many of the same things that I did, just in terms of the felt pressure, the felt observation, people knowing who you are because of who your parent in ministry is, and so forth.
Speaker 1:I guess this will be an interesting conversation, because you wrote the book 10 years ago and now you're actually living it with your own kids. Do you think there's anything that you have done differently with your kids as a result, maybe talking to other ministry kids, reflecting on your own experience?
Speaker 2:and then now parenting your kids. I think definitely there are things that I very conscientiously do differently, certainly, than how I was raised, but also then I might have otherwise and I think the primary one is regular not often, but regularly checking in with my kids with real specific questions about what. What are you experiencing at church? Questions about what? What are you experiencing at church? And trying to let them know that I understand that, um, that this, the conversation with me, is a safe space to be frustrated. So if they, if they feel under pressure, they can talk to me about that.
Speaker 2:Um, I had a funny conversation with with one of my daughters at one point, because in her adolescence she was fully teenager and she just looked at me and said there's no way you could understand what it's like to be a pastor's kid. And I tried really hard not to laugh out loud. I don't know if I succeeded, but I smugly went and took a book off my shelf and tossed it to her and said, yeah, I can, I very much understand. This is for you. And then we had a really fruitful conversation where I said no, I legitimately wrote this for people like you, people in your shoes. So, yeah, I do pastor. I think I pastor differently and I certainly parent differently, because of what I experienced growing up and I want to be clear what I experienced growing up wasn't terrible. Want to be clear what I experienced growing up wasn't, you know, terrible and traumatizing. There was just some really difficult aspects of it as it pertains to faith and relationship with the church, both of which I wanted to make easier for my kids.
Speaker 1:You've just given me one idea. It's actually not a bad idea, with some of the older kids, for parents in ministry to actually read the book with their kids. It's probably not a bad idea, with some of the older kids, for parents in ministry to actually read the book with their kids. It's probably quite a great idea because it's kind of using your words, your experience, but kids can relate to say, yeah, that sounds like me or not, in quite a non-threatening way. So, hot tip just already write off the bat read the book with your kids Right off the bat read the book with your kids.
Speaker 2:I've heard from a couple of pastors a few over the years who have done that with their, especially their, adolescent kids, and the ones I hear from are the ones who are nice enough to reach out and say this helped stir up fruitful conversations. So it is a thing that when a pastor has the I guess, courage, because it does kind of open you up for evaluation by your kids, which is a little bit frightening, I think it has been helpful for people, so I hope so anyway.
Speaker 1:So, Barnabas, we managed to connect over time zones, over social media, over really being strangers. I myself am curious why did you say yes to this podcast?
Speaker 2:I said yes to this podcast because the way you presented it was so clear in terms of the research that you'd been doing and the well-being of clergy families, pastors' families, which is a thing that is not the primary focus of my overall ministry. I serve at a local church, but it is a thing I care about and it's a thing that I because I wrote this book I've had kind of a hand in to a degree for a decade now, and the other piece of it was that what I saw was you weren't just evaluating, you were seeking to build up. The clear impression that I got was you're working for the good of families and the good of the church, which seemed wonderful to me and that seemed like the kind of thing that I'd be thrilled to participate in in whatever way I could.
Speaker 1:Well, I'm genuinely encouraged by what you've just said and I think that is our hope, that I I mean, I have two of my kids who, through the survey results and making sense of their own experiences, evaluating our parenting is frightening. But you know, barnabas, I think I often say to parents it's not about the rupture, it's not about the mistakes that we make, it's always in the the repair, it's always in going. Oh, I finally get it. Oh, this is what you've been trying to say to us and I think, equally to the church, because it's God's given gift to us to have fellowship and belonging and community. We're not meant to do this alone. And if we can all get on the same page and see that, you know we really want the same thing and here's a couple of really unique things that ministry, families and kids experience, and if you can get that, you know, I think we're a step ahead of where we were before. So I really appreciate you jumping on this call.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 1:One thing I want to get out of the way is that you obviously come from a famous public family, but I'm thinking social media and the internet was not, wasn't around for all of your childhood.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it wasn't around for much of my childhood at all. It was social media really wasn't until I was an adult. I'm 41 now, so and then, and then the Internet and sort of the rise of how videos made people famous and could be shared. That was more during my my early 20s and college years.
Speaker 1:While I accept that you've had an experience that is in and of itself unique, one of my hypotheses and I'm curious to see what you think about this is in an age now where just about every minister has their sermons on YouTube, people can screenshot their things. There's Facebook conversations about their ministry. In some ways, I think ministry kids in this day and age have got to live with kind of a public profile in their parents' ministry. What are your thoughts on that?
Speaker 2:That's yeah, I think that's absolutely true. I think you know it's what I experienced. You know, being the son of John Piper and he came to you know real evangelical prominence in the late nineties, early two thousands. So I was a teenager and then, heading into my college years, what I discovered as I, as I've talked to other pastors kids is that my experience wasn't different than theirs. It was just bigger. So there's there's sort of a scalability to so if I felt very much under pressure by being a pastor's kid of a well-known person, they felt the same way, just in a smaller context. So it's, you know, whether it's a hundred people or a thousand people or a hundred thousand people, it's generally the same experience to size and I suspect that the same thing is true for the public online persona or prominent ministries of pastors and how that affects kids.
Speaker 2:There is a difference in that the internet is a meaner place and it is a less human place. There's a lot more opportunity for people to anonymously be awful. I didn't experience that growing up, because if you were goingously be awful, that does you know. I didn't experience that growing up because if you were going to be awful to me, you kind of had to come do it to my face, and most people don't have the courage to do that. So, um, I think if there are criticisms and things like that, it's it.
Speaker 2:It might be that that side of things might be exacerbated by social media, the internet age thinking of of. You know, if a pastor makes a controversial statement that goes viral and his kids log onto their social media and they just see the comments upon comments or the resharing with vitriolic statements, that's uniquely hurtful and I have had to see that about my dad, but I didn't have to see it growing up. I kind of grew into that as an adult, which means I had maybe a little bit more capacity to handle it, hopefully with wisdom, patience, thick skin, something.
Speaker 1:Well, I'd love to. What I was hoping for this episode with you, barnabas, is really to engage your lived experience and by taking a bit of a walk around the book, particularly with, I think, the issues of identity and coming up with independence in faith and, you know, being able to grow in a Christian community when you're a ministry kid, not being the outsider but very much still benefiting from Christian fellowship. How does that sound to you?
Speaker 2:Sounds great.
Speaker 1:So the book is the Pastor's Kid, written by Barnabas Piper, and I'm going to just ask you well, actually, before I do that, was there anything from our survey results that really jumped out at you that you might want to talk about?
Speaker 2:I think the biggest thing was that nothing has changed in 10 or 12 years. So I you know the book came out 10 years ago. So I was doing my own sort of low key research 11 or 12 years ago and the summarized results of what you guys found were so similar to what I found in and what has remained true in conversations with people over the years. I think one of the staying power of this conversation. I think it's surprising because almost everything else in the church is cyclical and it is and it kind of goes in maybe seven to ten year cycles and so if it's, if there's something that's really popular now, it won't be in five or seven or eight years, but this seems to be an ongoing lived experience of pastor's kids. I do think churches are getting better at caring for pastor's families. I think there's more conscientiousness about it now, which is fantastic, but the results said there's a lot of similarities. So I think that was probably the most surprising thing is that I would have expected more difference and instead it was this continues.
Speaker 1:If you were thinking that there could be some differences, what might have been some of the things that you thought would have made the differences?
Speaker 2:That's a good question. I don't know that I thought about it that deeply as much as just things change. You know the church changes. But I do think I think one of the things that I would have expected as a as a potential cause for change is that there was a time when pastors were put very much on a pedestal in almost every evangelical church culture, and it didn't matter ethnicity, it didn't matter church size, it didn't matter denomination Pastors were prominent figures. I think that has changed in the church and there are a lot of churches where the pastor is, in some healthy ways and then in some unhealthy ways, less respected than he used to be, which you would think maybe would take some of the pressure off of the pastor's family. Um, because because they're less, uh, they're less kind of pedestaled. But my hypothesis would be that they're still as public as they ever have been. They're just not as kind of the poster boy, if you will.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think that number one, because I looked at the results again today just from a different angle, and I think you can see that it is the busyness of ministry. There's higher expectations of output as well and we're probably a lot more switched on. You know, the digital age just means that you're tempted or expected to continue to read text messages or WhatsApps or Facebook and emails, but also, I think it's the age of loneliness. So you know, our survey results suggested that about half the kids were struggling with some levels of loneliness, but that is across society, so we're probably a lot more disconnected from one another as well. So I think maybe those changes in church life are true, but they don't necessarily mean they've brought more relief. In fact, I think it's probably complicated the picture a bit more.
Speaker 2:I mean as a pastor, I haven't even thought about that in terms of talking to my kids about those specific aspects. But as a pastor I can say that that's true, comparing my experience now as one of the pastors at a pretty decent-sized church to my dad's experience, he, you know we had a home phone and, and you know we got letters and we got letters in the mailbox and so correspondence with him or reaching out to him had very specific and not always available channels and I remember him telling me unless it's an emergency, tell them I'm not available. So I answer the phone hello, this is Piper Residence and I would just decline calls. Basically, I'm sorry he's not available right now. Can I take a message for him, kind of thing. And that's not possible when your phone buzzes in your pocket while you are with your family. So that has definitely muddied the waters of boundaries and accessibility and then bleeding into busyness.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely All right, we're just going to walk around your book now, chapter one what's wrong with that boy? You know the thing that struck me about that chapter boom from the first chapter it was you know you talk about how you didn't have any relief, even in the car park or if you went to the supermarket or at school or the toilet. These are all unseen spaces for a ministry kid to be judged.
Speaker 2:For you. How did you find relief from that? There was a couple of different ways. One of them was that my parents did a very good job of not putting additional pressure on us kids because we were the pastor's family. I have no recollections of my mother, for example, doing something like we're on our way to church and her saying you better behave because we are the pastor's family. There was, there was, it was always understood that I was to behave because that's the right christian standard for a kid. You, you, you obey your parents. So so that there was relief in that way because I didn't, I didn't feel like I was getting it at home at on that pressured front.
Speaker 2:Um, the other way was that, in god's kindness, I have always had a small number of close friends who I could just be my unfiltered self with, which is not always great. You know, my unfiltered self, especially as a kid, could be pretty out of control, but but they didn't. I never got judgment from them for acting out of bounds in the pastor's kid way, and so those those close friendships were, were a sweet relief, even if it was an outlet that I was, I was, I was acting the fool in and and, and you know being dumb. Um, there was still. There was still a relief of just in these spaces and these friends' houses when we're playing video games in their basement or playing basketball or whatever it is. We're just kids, we're just having fun, we're just cutting up and being silly and whatever else. And those in retrospect are maybe even more dear to me than they were at the time and I loved them at the time.
Speaker 1:So there's a kind of like for me that sounds to me that your parents giving you that acceptance and space to be a regular kid helps them in those instances when other people might have different expectations of you, does it kind of their view of you has more weight and helps you overcome that. But would you have been able to go up to your parents and say, hey, you know, I'm having a rough time, like you know, in the car park someone said that I was dressed weird and I should change, or the music that I'm listening to. Would that have been an easy conversation to have?
Speaker 2:No, it wouldn't have. And and that's I will say one one thing that is that was very difficult at the time but has been kind of a sweet change over the years. That was very difficult at the time but has been kind of a sweet change over the years. My parents were not. They did. I don't even think they were aware of the kind of pressure that that we were under.
Speaker 2:I think maybe in a general way we being me and my siblings um, maybe in a general way, that that that there's an additional pressure, but I don't think they kind of recognize the, the specificity of it or how constant it was, and so they never cracked the door open to have those conversations when I was younger. We have had really good conversations over the last, I'd say, 10 years, so in adulthood, and they have talked about how, if they could go back and do some things differently, they recognize things now that they didn't recognize at the time. So there's been this sweet ongoing change, which is wonderful because it means they're still investing in being good parents and the relationship can get better. But at the time I don't think I would have even known how to go to them and so there was both not an instinct to do that. And so there was both not an instinct to do that and also I don't know that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think, I think I would have, just I don't know that I would have known how to articulate it, I think a lot of the pressure that I felt was something that I learned how to articulate later, not in the moment, as a 12 year old or a 14 year old or something like that.
Speaker 1:You're actually reminding me of one of the comments in the survey says I wish I could say things better to my parents. Now I don't expect you to have the magic answer to this, but with your own kids, what have you attempted and what seems to be working, so that maybe we can get some wisdom to know? Okay, let's try this with our kids.
Speaker 2:Yeah, because I have learned over the years how to articulate the things that I felt when I was a child and an adolescent. I just try to pose questions pertaining to those specific things to my kids now. You know questions like do you ever feel like somebody holds you to a higher standard? And the answers vary. You know, at certain periods of time they shrug and they're like no, I'm fine, Everything's good, and sometimes they're like, yeah, it's really frustrating. And then there's usually some venting and then, hopefully, a fruitful conversation.
Speaker 2:I talk to them about the necessity of coming into their own faith. I don't even know if they know what I mean by that, but what I want them to hear is you don't need to parrot me and it's okay to have questions, you know. So if there are things that you are struggling that you read in the Bible and you go I don't really get this, that's okay. You're not obliged to get that because you're a pastor's kid. You're not obliged to get that because you're a pastor's kid. You're not obliged to accept that because you're a pastor's kid. If we're accepting that, it's because we, we are, we are having belief in the God who wrote it, and so we, we want, I want them to have the, the, the, the freedom to come to a faith in Christ that they articulate in their terms and on their timing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, I think it's that checking in behavior. So they could use your book, they could use the results of our survey. Go. There are some universal truths now that have been established over the decades and across continents that some ministry kids might experience this. What's that like for you? And that checking in behavior, just keeping that consistent and constant. You know, eventually you might get an answer, but I guess it shows that as parents, they're important, aren't they? We're checking into their experience.
Speaker 2:And one thing that I've observed with my kids and I think this was true of me, but again I didn't have the outlet was there are times they get angsty and frustrated and maybe are not, and if I just said what's wrong, it might not, they might not be able to put it into words, but if I say, hey, is there something?
Speaker 2:is there something that happened at church that's frustrating you, is there like a group of people who have kind of made you feel under pressure or whatever it is that will often lead to maybe not immediately in the moment, but lead to a kind of an unearthing of what it is that's causing them to feel angsty because they feel like they're being asked to be a hypocrite or they're feeling judged or or or and it and it can kind of draw some of that out. So even just having the, the, the awareness and the research that you've done gives some great categories to pastors on things to ask about. You can draw out some of that, that angst that might not be readily articulated.
