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
Ministry Siblings: Anna Cox and Michael Jensen
Anna Cox who serves with Reach Australia and Michael Jensen (podcast co-host of With All Due Respect) are siblings who share their perspective growing up within the evangelical Christian Anglican community in Sydney. While Anna and Michael shared the same upbringing, they reflect on how differing personalities can shape one’s response to the ministry family experience. They also share what it was like to grow up surrounded by theological students, their fondest memories of faith communities, and some of the formative experiences growing up in the "fishbowl".
Get the full report of our survey findings here
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.
Speaker 2:Hi Valerie.
Speaker 3:Hey, nice to be, here.
Speaker 1:Now do you mind just telling us a little bit about what you're currently doing in the ministry space? Anna?
Speaker 3:Well, I have four kids, so most of my ministry space, I suppose, is taken up with raising them. But I also work part-time for Reach Australia, particularly helping out with the church planting part of what they do, which is really exciting.
Speaker 2:So I also have four kids, although they're a bit older than Anna's, and so I think we both have daughters doing the HSC today, but mine's the youngest and yours is the oldest, Anna that's right.
Speaker 2:So that's the sort of difference there. But I've been the rector at St Mark's at Darling Point for 11 years almost exactly, and so that's a parish and a parish of a couple of hundred people. You know all that entails and I also do. You know ministry around the place because I was a lecturer before and I've done some writing and what have you. So that's part of what I do in my ministry sphere. We also run a podcast, another podcast, so do a lot of that kind of talking in public.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I don't know. Congratulations that you've got kids in Year 12 doing their exams today.
Speaker 3:All commiserations either are fine.
Speaker 1:Yeah, mine finished. I've got kids who finished school, so the HSC is a distant past for me and I never want to relive it again. So part of the invitation to come on this podcast is that you have had your own encounters with growing up in a ministry household and you are siblings as well, though Michael was sharing with me that maybe a little bit of a different experience to most of the kids. Yeah, your dad was largely in theological education, although, like you've just said, um, a very known family in christian circles. Uh, I think I came upon someone actually saying something like um, uh, like a famous christian name or famous Christian family. Do you ever think about it that way, michael?
Speaker 2:Well, it seems a bit weird because it's famous in a very small way, so in a very small group, so it's not famous, not really. But I mean it's just that you know our dad had a prominent and has had since. We were kids as well, and along with our uncle have had very prominent roles in the evangelical Christian Anglican world in Sydney and in Australia in particular, and so there's a sort of they're known in a certain circle, so it's that kind of famous, if you like. I presume that in lawn bowls and in the RSL there are likewise people who are famous in that area.
Speaker 3:I was just going to say. I agree with Michael, it's a very niche experience. There are places where I would go, where before I was married and I had the last name Jensen, people would always say are you Peter or Philip's daughter? So I got that quite a lot in certain places, but not in other places certainly.
Speaker 2:I still get that, although sometimes now I get. Are you the third brother, because I'm that old.
Speaker 1:So how aware of it were you when you were growing up.
Speaker 3:Let's say you know primary school years, were you aware of it? Aware of what do you mean? Like our dad being prominent? Yeah, you go, michael.
Speaker 2:Oh, okay, yeah, I would say reasonably. So I suppose Anna sort of grew as dad. Peter Jensen became the principal of Moore College when I was about year seven, year eight, and so it's probably Anna and that's a significant role in our tribe. So he had just been a lecturer before then and really my uncle's ministry was really growing about that time and people started to. He was a controversial figure. He's kind of well-known for being very blunt, speaking and having strong opinions and so therefore he's a matter of well, are you on his side or against him?
Speaker 2:So there's a little bit of that, and I became aware of that more and more as we went through high school, In particular when I about the time I became a Christian, we were actually at the AFES National Conference that's the Student Ministry of Australia, and the famous John Stott was speaking, but also Peter and Philip Jensen were speaking at that conference. So that was pretty big that they were speaking at that conference, and so I remember becoming a Christian. I was a 16-year-old but I was sort of hanging out with the uni students there and so you know I was related to the people speaking at the conference. That had 600 people attending alongside John Stott, so that wasn't a nothing.
Speaker 3:I think for me, dad Michael and I are, can I say, michael, we're 10 years apart in age, so in some ways our childhood we have had quite different experiences, but similarly, when I was in year seven or eight, my uncle was standing for Archbishop at that time and I remember a teacher at school coming and finding me and speaking to me about it. So I think that was when I became a bit more conscious of people knowing my family and certainly through that high school years and when I got to uni, there was a lot of people who knew and then therefore assumed things about what I believed and what I thought about things as well.
Speaker 2:So it's remarkable how insensitive adults can be. I mean it's quite extraordinary really. There were teachers at school or just adults I knew who can be quite rude, I mean just really rude, and I was an adolescent. So it's one thing to be rude to a grown-up but it does feel like I do remember sort of some things. Looking back on. I think that's really inappropriate to say to a 16 year old or a 15 year old or even even someone who's 17 or 18 uh, you know, oh, do you think what you know? Are you? Oh, you're one of those? Are you one of the ginsens that they're terrible? You know that, that terrible. You belong to that terrible tribe. Well, I think that's pretty rich, you ask me.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I went to a high school which at the time was quite liberal in its Anglicanism, and so the chaplain was not of our tribe, and I remember him just making a few snide remarks here and there about my family and what I stood for or what we stood for. So, yeah, it was forming for my faith in a way, because I think when you're put in that position you have to know what you believe yourself. So it was forming in a good way.
Speaker 1:So if I were to reflect on the kids that have answered our survey and they would not have come from families as well known as yours. And yet I do get a sense as I read the comments. There is a kind of a sense of you know, friends might have an opinion about what your parents do and that might not always be a good opinion. You know, you might get teased. There might be people who make assumptions about what they see on the news and then say, oh, you know, your dad's like that or your family's like that. Do you think that, having had kids yourself, michael, that have gone through school and things like that, does that still happen for ministry kids? Do you think that that's a thing?
Speaker 2:I't. I don't know if I've I don't know if I've ever had the kind of frank conversation with my own children about that, um, but I really wanted them to know that they can be their own person. I think it took enormous strength because you, you have to not be what you don't have. You have to not just be reactive to the snide comments. In either way, you can either say, well, I'm not going to be that and I'm going to be the antithesis of the antithesis of what they think I am. Or you can say, well, I'm just going to agree exactly with what my parents saw and what my father thinks, and so my ideas are not my own, and so it's important to do neither of those things, and I think it's important, as parents, to allow our children to do not. You know, to have the freedom to be neither of those extremes Because that's what will happen is, I think, is that you get reactive if there's pressure.
Speaker 1:Do you have any thoughts, Anna?
Speaker 3:No, I agree with what Michael said about that. I think one of the things our parents did really well was, while they set us up in a very Christian family intentionally Christian family it was always very clear to me that this was a personal faith, that it was a decision we had to make on our own about whether to follow Jesus or not, and I think that was really important our own about whether to follow Jesus or not, and I think that was really important, and I think that, yeah, I think you have to be. I think it's important to encourage your kids to make these decisions for themselves and come to their opinions of their own free will. I think that's really important.
Speaker 2:Yes, which does mean giving them space to know that if they explore or diverge in their views, like this, they're not going to you know.
Speaker 2:They're going to be supported, they're going to still be part of the family.
Speaker 2:So sometimes I think you know we're a family that's built on a common faith and so you know we're invested in it, because this is, you know, the house we very house we live in is a church house, and so that dad thinks a certain thing and mum usually mum, of course as well is part of our livelihood, is part of who we are, and this is very different from selling cars or working for the government or being a doctor, in a way, so you don't have to be a doctor or agree.
Speaker 2:You know having a parent who's a doctor doesn't you don't have to be a doctor or agree. Having a parent who's a doctor doesn't you don't have to agree with or doesn't commit you to being a doctor or something. But the question is, what if I have a different faith, or my faith is slightly different or I disagree with you on one of the issues around our faith, and so it's very important to know that actually the family's not bound together just by that. In fact, it's bound together by your love for one another, your mutual love for one another, and that you deeply love your children, and they need to know that.
Speaker 1:And so, anna, I'm curious. One of the things that we discovered is that you can see that siblings in the survey can have very different views of the questions and their answers, because you can see they're all coming from the same postcode. You know sometimes three of them, four of them, I think we might have even had six of them at one point. What's that like for you? Have you noticed that even as siblings, you might have had different experiences growing up as ministry kids?
Speaker 3:yeah, yeah, absolutely. I mean obviously, michael and I, as I said before, had quite different childhoods in some ways. That mom and dad were trying it out on michael and my sister, beth and they got it right for me and my younger siblings. Uh, is that right, michael, anyway? But I think the most more interesting in some ways is I'm a twin. So my brother, our brother, dave, and I are twins.
Speaker 3:People may have heard Dave's testimony. He's on a couple of podcasts, himself sharing his testimony, and he and I had very different experiences growing up. I would say I think a lot of it is based on personality. Actually, we had the same experience in terms of birth order and, you know, sharing rooms and sharing lots of experiences, but I was always sort of a rule follower and he was more of a rule breaker.
Speaker 3:Um, the example I like to give is that, you know, if mum asked us to set the table, I would say sure, and David would say why? Why do I have to do that? So he was always a questioning kind of, uh, confrontational sort of a kid, I suppose. And as and as we grew up, our differences became a bit more stark and he uh wandered away from the faith, uh, for quite a while and I think, in some ways, like God was working in me and he was giving you know, gave me his Holy spirit and I, uh, was growing in my understanding of my faith, Um, but also, I think, a personality, I was a compliant sort of a person. So that just meant that some of the experiences the minister kid experiences that may have rubbed him the wrong way, didn't rub me the wrong way. What would you say, mark?
Speaker 2:Well, I would say also, I tend to be more compliant and less confrontational, so I tend to be more sneaky. Anyway, if I wanted to rebel, I just didn't get found out, and so I think our parents kind of had to learn, because you think you've done a good job, but it turns out actually it's just it is much about the personality of your children and and um and so actually parenting is very much more complicated than some kind of method. It's a. It is about adjusting to the children you have in front of you, with all their quirks, because they are made very differently and and so what will work for one won't necessarily work for the other, but I think actually what will work for all of them is a deep commitment to love them in the way Christ loves us. You know the way God loves us in Christ. I think that is with patience and long-suffering and you know, forbearance and a huge amount of grace, and I think that's what we were shown. I think our parents might even agree with that, and I'm sure they're going to be listening to this. So I'm very careful of what I say, but I think I can be entirely honest. But I think that's right.
Speaker 2:I think when I was at Moore College and I discussed this before, I noticed this that people who had become Christians and weren't part of a Christian family were sometimes far more anxious about being Christian parents than people who'd grown up in Christian homes, and this didn't always work out very well.
Speaker 2:So a person who's very anxious because they didn't know what a Christian home was like, they often will look to resources that are far more, I think, legalistic and won't parent out of their godly character. They'll perhaps have a method, and this method can be far more restrictive than is necessary or just far more of a pattern. And so when I was at college, there was some people taking some parenting advice, I think from a very unhelpful source, and it led to very rigid, very extremely rigid, legalistic parenting, I think, and also rather smug parenting, because people would say, oh, our child sleeps all the time, that's because we follow the pattern and our child was a real crier. Well, it turns out, if you've had two or three kids, some of them are criers, some of them are not. This is just even at the level of babies. Apparently, we're supposed to be disciplining babies for crying according to this particular pattern. Well, that's patently ridiculous if you think about it.
Speaker 1:It's very hard, I think, to be prescriptive when you're bringing up your children in ministry, which brings me to the next topic. What do you think about this idea of growing up in a fishbowl? Did you feel like you were growing up in a fishbowl, close quarters, people being able to look in, people investigating and seeing what you were doing and making comments on it, maybe?
Speaker 3:I don't think I felt that particularly. I know I think probably my parents may have felt that a little bit that people you know when other people can see your electricity bill and your phone bills and your you know they have to fix broken. I remember a couple of our brothers used to break windows, frequently with cricket balls, you know, and every time we had to call the college handyman to come and fix it over. There's just things like that. So you know all your mistakes can be are out there for people to see. I didn't particularly feel like that myself, I don't think, but as I said, I was compliant, so maybe I didn't feel too embarrassed about anything much.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I don't know. But just in that even being aware of what your parents might have been encountering, anna, was that something that you, as you were growing up, you were aware? Maybe to try not to break the window or, you know, try maybe to use less electricity, was that?
Speaker 3:something you were aware of? No, I don't think so, and I think that's because, as with most kids, I was probably just concerned with what was happening in my own life and not really aware of what was happening to other people. It wasn't part of my experience, so I wasn't that empathetic, I think.
Speaker 2:I was referring to a story which was that one of our brothers won't say which one, because there's more than one to choose from started ringing Sweden and Canada. This is in the days when overseas phone calls were all central, you know, and everybody. So the phone bill was very expensive and the college administered the phone bill. So there was this massive phone bill. It was coupled with the fact that the college actually didn't look at it for several months. So then it looked at it and realized, oh my goodness, so that was a bit embarrassing, but I didn't feel too fishbowly and we always had theological students around.
Speaker 2:But I mean I was at school a lot. I mean we went off to a school that kept us very busy and so I wasn't at home or anything like that really. And also it was a big like we were lucky in one sense. It was a big house and so people didn't hear you having a tantrum or an argument with someone. It's not like you had no privacy. I think there was plenty of that. It is when you're in closer quarters and people can hear you having a bit of a someone having a bit of a meltdown, and then your parents are self-conscious, maybe, about the meltdown. People have meltdowns.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean, I think, as with most things, you can take the negative and positive spin on these things, and I suppose the negatives of feeling like you're in a fishbowl is that there are people always around in your business. But the positive of that is that there are people always around, and we had a wonderful experience of meeting all sorts of people who were in our house college students who would come in and visit dad, but also, you know, visiting theologians. I met Kevin Rudd once in a lounge room, so like just random, interesting people. And I think that's the positive spin of being in a fishbowl is that you get to meet lots of different adults that you, as a child, you wouldn't normally get to interact with, and I think you, as a child, you wouldn't wouldn't normally get to interact with, and I think that's a real blessing and privilege. So I think it's really um, you know, I think it's really easy to focus on the negative, the negative things about, uh, this experience, but there's actually so much positive um with that.
Speaker 3:Can I add to that, sorry, just as I thought that, um, there are people who are interested in you that wouldn't otherwise be interested in you too. So there are? Um, yeah, I think there are adults in my life who I have deep relationships with that I wouldn't have had, except that my parents were in the position they had. And um, yeah, I was talking to a friend who's a minister's kid as well and she said she used to love the student ministers coming for lunch on a Sunday after church. She loved having those relationships, so anyway, they invested in her.
Speaker 2:Sometimes people, adults do want to kind of cultivate your, cultivate you because they want to get to your parents or they want to kind of access. So there is that sometimes and you can kind of see that coming. I think that's a little bit weird. Occasionally I could see that you know, someone wanted to get to know, wanted to really know what my father or my uncle thought, and so they would kind of cultivate me as a friend, which is sort of a strange thing to do. But I think you become obsessed to that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's interesting. How do you respond to something like that?
Speaker 2:oh, I just, you just don't give it really much. Um, you know, I think courtesy, but I don't, you know, you don't you become, you just get a nose for it and you think, oh well, that that person isn't a genuine, they're not genuinely interested in me, they're, they're just interested in, they're really interested in the kind of access to my father that they really that's what they want, and it's a really weird way to do it, to go through their adolescent son or something. But you know, you can tell authenticity, right, you can tell, and I think actually kids have a good nose for it.
Speaker 2:So they pick up in sincerity and I think it was easy to see.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think definitely the surveys. The kids were saying that there are a lot of privileges and faith benefits, if you like, of being a ministry kid and they're fully aware of it. I'm curious, in the times that you grew up, whether it was as part of the theological community or these people that were visiting your homes what are some of the fondest memories you have about having these adults and pouring encouragement or things into your faith life? What are some of your fond memories?
Speaker 3:I just think family dinners. We had very kind of wild, rambunctious family dinners where you know we'd have people sitting around the table and just hearing stories and things like that. I also, my parents, were good friends with a couple called Kent and Barbara Hughes, who are Americans, and when I finished high school I went and lived with them for two months in America, which was a wonderful experience and that was a friendship that my parents had fostered through ministry connections so, and they were very pivotal to me in my faith as well. So I think, yeah, just just relationship, I think.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I would say my memory and memories do grow fond, but my memory was and I hope that my own family's been this my memory was that we talked about anything and everything. It wasn't just sort of like boring, boringly mono subject. It wasn't like just we talk about church stuff though we did, but we talked about all sorts of things and there's a lot of, you know, a lot of good humor and sort of you know, banter back and forward and um between mum and dad as much as any anything but but um partly. Our grandfather lived with us for a number of a number of years as well and he was a great. He was a great talker and he could talk about anything. He was kind of self-taught and knew everything about everything. You know. His knowledge of history and everything was kind of amazing and he'd lived through some of it as far as we were concerned. And so it wasn't just talking about what had happened at church or what had happened at college, and so that's fantastic.
Speaker 2:And the books we had in our house. We had a house full of books, right, ministry families are often very musical, which ours was and very much full of books. There were sorts of books there. It wasn't just evangelical, theological books. There were lots of history, lots of history, lots of literature and so lots of interesting things like that, which I think, and an interest in sport too, so that I liked. I also like I think humor is so important so that your household is not die. It's not sort of dour and life is heavy Life. There was a sort of lightness to life actually. I felt that that because the teenager can be pretty intense, right, it's kind of nice that not everybody in your life takes life so seriously as the 15-year-old in your world. So I think that's a great, I think that was a blessing, that kind of just the tone that was set through that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you're getting me to reflect a little bit too. That would be true of our household. I think we've enjoyed being in ministry and we've been in international ministry, you know sort of the financial resources you have. Changes just depending on where we've been and who we're serving, but we've always, I think, just had a little bit of fun with that and not tried to get too stressed out about it.
Speaker 2:fun, with that and not try to get too stressed out about it.
Speaker 2:I'm glad that you've brought up finances, because that might be something that people reflect on, because at one level, as in the ministry, it's a professional inverted commas in societal terms, it's a professional career, and some ones.
Speaker 2:You've often trained. Not only have you got an undergraduate degree in some other subjects, you've often trained for four further years and you're living depending on where you're living, you're living amongst people who are much wealthier than you and, especially given that a lot of ministry kids get sent to private schools, often they go to schools with people who are much wealthier than them, and so I know that there's been some tension with colleagues of mine where their kids are very jealous of the car, of the holidays. They've found the fact that we don't have a we have a very lower middle-class income compared to it's all relative. Of course, I think ministry people are very well off in Australia and in Sydney, so just to be completely clear and you don't have to buy your own house et cetera, necessarily, but you're living amongst people who have a lot more cash and so therefore, in the eastern suburbs in particular, people are having destination holidays and ministry kids aren't Now. I do remember our parents. I remember having sausages and bread more than once because money had run out.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, I don't know if you remember that?
Speaker 3:Yes, I do, yeah, I do. Or bolognese for the you know fifth time in two weeks. Yeah, which was good. My mates are good bolognese Too. Right, which was good, my mates are good bolognese.
Speaker 2:Too right. I was just going to quickly say for some people I know of that, their teenagers found that difficult because and they're young, right they were looking at people, their friends and realising they didn't have the kind of resources to have the kind of fashions, the kind of holidays, the kind of experiences that their friends did, and so they then felt alienated. And it is a bit unique because ordinarily you live alongside people who have the same as you and a missionary might actually be better off in one sense than people in the surrounding culture but when you live amongst a wealthier culture, then kids are acutely aware of what they don't have and they're not necessarily in the adventure. It depends whether they feel they may receive it very differently.
Speaker 3:This isn't a fully formed thought, but so my husband is also a minister's kid. This isn't a fully formed thought, but so my husband is also a minister's kid and we both had similar experiences growing up of, you know, sausages and bread for dinner and things like that, and our kids just I mean, partly because of the time that we live in I think we're a wealthier nation now but also my husband's not in ministry. So you know, we have, uh, we have more than we did when we were kids, and I just sometimes I think we look at our kids and think they have no idea. They have no idea, like McDonald's for us was a treat, uh, but McDonald's for my kids is like, oh, whatever, you know. So it's just funny, it's just a funny different experience, a funny different experience, the different experiences, that kind of shape who you are, I suppose.
Speaker 1:Probably the faith community around also makes a difference, because I do know that there are families that are struggling to have, you know, six kids in a very small house or struggling to, you know, sort of make ends meet, especially if you have children with special needs and the medical bills and the specialist bills are all piling up. One of the things that I think I've learned to see is that not to blame anybody, but you know, when we say it really takes a village, it really takes a village to encourage ministry families, you know to have the empathy and the understanding but also, I think, the interest of what could be uniquely happening for them in their situation and in that context text. Do you have any warm, fond memories of faith communities when you were growing up?
Speaker 2:just being encouraging for you guys. You go first Michael. Yes, certainly so. When Anna and David were born, way back in 1991, the church we were at actually clubbed together and got us a dishwasher and he would come in on Thursdays.
Speaker 2:No, no, it's actually a machine and that's some of my best material and that was a very generous. That was a very generous gift, because those sorts of white goods were that was more expensive and less normal at the time. Just for the younger listeners here, I think that was a sign of affection. And again, we've talked already about sort of relationships I think they were gold. Just people who would take a genuine interest in you and be supportive in that way, people who took me aside and said, do you understand grace? I mean that was amazing, so that was an amazing blessing.
Speaker 2:So I would say, yeah, when I was about 16, I think that was, you know, they didn't just assume that I knew the gospel. I thought that was amazing because they might have, they might have thought I would react. You know how dare you doubt my faith, but they really did. And I had great youth leaders as well, in particular one I'm, you know, still very good friends with today. So that was you know, you can't replicate those blessings, you can't kind of buy those sorts of blessings actually.
Speaker 3:Wow, yeah, I think the main thing for me is, as I mentioned, relational. I think relational investment was where I saw the community, the village community, invest in our family and in me. And I remember a guy at college. He was a college student. He just one year decided he was going to start a little club for all the lecturers' kids at college and he did and I just have really fond memories of that.
Speaker 1:It was a really fun, beautiful time that did come out in the survey, I think kids saying that they really enjoy spending time with other ministry kids and having intentional spaces to do that. So, whether it's camps or conferences, or, I think this is a great idea. Someone comes up with an idea and says how about we gather all the kids of the faculty and if we could minister to them? I think that shows a deep understanding that you know they're a group of kids who could build friendships and fellowship with one another and be taken care of. That's amazing.
Speaker 3:I was just going to say, some of my closest friends are minister's kids, as I said, my husband. So obviously there's a kindred spirit, kindred spiritness you find in another minister's kid.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and if we could just focus on now, just coming to an end, like if there was a ministry kid that was listening to us. What's one piece of encouragement you'd like to leave with them, michael?
Speaker 2:Well, it's always hard to narrow down one piece of encouragement. I would say that the great blessing of being a Christian and a minister's kid your parents, may parents. Results may vary when it comes to parents, but God doesn't vary and the gospel is the same and it means you can actually both give thanks to God for your parents but also, I think, forgive your parents if need be, and actually you'll need to forgive your parents and parents actually need to ask forgiveness of their children, which is something that's kind of counterintuitive, but it is the case that that'll be the case, but actually the gospel gives you freedom enough to do that and, yeah, I think that's right. I think, whatever your experience, there's actually that greater and deeper hope.
Speaker 1:Thanks, anna.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think I would love to encourage ministers' kids to yeah, I think, similar to what Michael said show grace to your parents, because they're not going to get it right. I think there are expectations. We talk about expectations people have on ministers' kids, but I think people have expectations on ministry parents as well, and they're not going to get it right. So, just as a teacher doesn't always get it right or a chef doesn't get it right, or a project manager doesn't always get it right, a minister doesn't always get it right. Or a chef doesn't get it right or a project manager doesn't always get it right, a minister doesn't always get it right. So be willing to show your parents grace for when they get it wrong. I'd like to encourage kids to do that.
Speaker 1:Awesome, and if there were parents listening in, I think there would be parents listening in. What would be something you'd want to leave with them, Michael.
Speaker 2:Oh, I would just say I would say grace gives us a lightness, as I said, a lightness of being, I think don't be boringly sort of monotone about life. Don't be boringly sort of monotone about life. You know, the gospel is really really important, and so it's so important that you need to spend time and enjoy your kids, spend time enjoying them, and it's so important that it's worth laughing together over. I think that's so important to me because I think that it's not obsessive or it's actually understanding that God's got it and so therefore, we can enjoy one another, and I think there's not space to enjoy one another, and so I'd urge Christian parents to play the long game and to help their kids enjoy the time with them.
Speaker 1:How about you?
Speaker 3:Anna. I think unconditional love, which is what we've talked about when we talked to our brother Dave, particularly about his time, not as a Christian. He talks about the unconditional love that our parents and our family showed him, and I think that was really important. It meant that, above all else, there was a connection between us and him and he felt that he could always come back, and that was really important. So I think maintaining that connection, which I think is due to unconditional love, is really significant. And I also think sharing your life with your kids is really important Obviously not oversharing, which I think some parents tend to do, and you don't want to overshare too much, but I do think sharing the ups and downs and being honest about those things is really helpful too.
Speaker 2:I'd say I think, particularly for ministers, you know it's a really weird thing that you preach and your kids listen to you do that, and so there needs to be a match between what you say in the pulpit and what you are at home. So don't say things in the pulpit that you don't actually mean. I think. So I'm always wary of that. I never use examples from my. I very rarely use examples unless very, very positive about my kids. So I'm very discreet about them. I don't share their lives with the congregation in that way, so I'm just wary of that. You know they're not there as fodder for me so I can tell a good anecdote, but so I've kind of made a number of different points there. But I think that's something to be aware of, and so I mean again, if you're thundering against a particular thing in the culture, if you're thundering against transgender ideology for instance, just be aware who's listening, and particularly about your own kids and what that means if that's a struggle they're facing.
Speaker 1:And finally, anything for faith communities, churches or missions, community to know about, caring and supporting ministry kids.
Speaker 3:I think what we've highlighted today is the relational importance that we really valued that and I think, yeah, I keep investing in the ministry kids that are in your life and letting them know that you see them. I was observing our kids minister at our church. Her kids are always there an hour before church and they're always there, you know, when she's running something, and I thought I think it's to help them feel seen, I suppose, and valued, and see that their ministry is valued because they are doing ministry in a way, aren't they?
Speaker 1:So, yeah, they really are, and I think they really believe in that as well and take a joy in doing that with their families.
Speaker 3:Yeah, Well, they can. I think it's important that you know you give those, give them the opportunity if they're finding it hard, so that that's okay. That's okay to find it hard. Yeah, yeah, it's okay to go, it's okay.
Speaker 2:For instance, if a teenager wants to go to another church, not, not, not mom and dad's yeah, that's okay. Yes, give them options, um, give them space to do that. I think, with encouragement, drive them there, you know, I think that's a good thing to do and it shows you're not. It's not just about you, it's about them. It's about them and their relationship with God. I think that's great yeah.
Speaker 3:Don't just assume that because their parents are ministers, they have it all together, or that they understand grace. I think that's yeah. Don't just assume that because their parents are ministers, they have it all together or that they understand grace. I think that's yeah. Don't just make assumptions.
Speaker 1:Well, thank you so much for spending this time with me. I've really appreciated hearing a little bit about your story, a little bit of your reflections and your input for ministry kids and ministry families. Thanks so much, michael and Anna my pleasure. No, anna my pleasure.
Speaker 3:No worries, a pleasure.
Speaker 1:Thanks for listening to the podcast. If you liked what you heard and you think others should hear it too, don't forget to like, share and subscribe. Catch you later.
