This plastic world of our own making helps to make the Christian faith appear more and more irrelevant and ill. 

Pastor’s sons who find No More Christian Nice Guy indispensable have not been allowed to exercise a real will of their own.  Instead, their wants, needs, desires and dreams have been subjected to the will of others.  As a result, they are pretty much the ideal Christian child because they are tremendously pleasant to be around, but they later flounder in adult life.

Ultimately, these pastor’s sons just don’t feel safe in life, and if you gave them a shot of sodium pentothal—truth serum—my guess is most of them would say that it’s sinful to be human.

A dear friend of our ministry in Wisconsin once told a pastor’s son something that is worth repeating to many other pastor’s sons and daughters.  Like many children of ministers, he felt he always had to be “up” and always had to have an answer to most every question.  So she turned to him while working on the same project and said, “You don’t always have to be happy and you don’t always have to have an answer.  It’s okay to not know something.”  These are wise and compassionate words that we should keep in mind as we do our part to change this terrible situation.

Pray for the pastor’s sons and daughters who you know.

Treat their parents with dignity when you disagree with them.

A friend of mine, Nate Larkin, Founder of Samson Society (www.samsonsociety.com) and author of Samson and the Pirate Monks: Calling Men to Authentic Brotherhood, is a pastor’s son who knows the pressure they feel to live two very different lives.  Here’s what he recommends: “Let the kid be a kid.  He’s not a representative of the pastor, nor is he responsible for upholding his father’s reputation.  Let him make his mistakes.  Give him the same grace you’d give any other kid in the church.”