Aunty, why is church work so destructive to families?
29 April 2024 |
Dear Aunt Sevvy,
Have you noticed how many pastors’ and teachers’ children end up leaving the church? I’ve also seen divorces result from the high demands and expectations on church workers. The rare person who sets up boundaries to protect their family is considered “not a team player.”
It continues generation after generation of church workers, and no one calls it out. Mostly, they just blame the pastor or teacher. What’s going on?
Signed, Hoping for Change
Dear Hoping,
The demands made on church employees aren’t just demands on time—lots of people have jobs that are demanding on their time. But being always under a critical microscope, expected to behave in a certain way in order to avoid embarrassing your parents or your spouse, is emotionally corrosive. For most church employees, their whole world is in one place: friends, employment, family, interests, and everything else, all wrapped up in church.
Aunty has seen church employees and their families criticized for what they wear, what they eat, what kind of music they listen to, what they do with their time, the friends they choose, and more. They’re expected to be at every event, and never do anything that might displease even the most judgy saint. Aunty knows a pastor’s wife who was written up for not attending church the day after she miscarried. Another pastor received regular anonymous letters in his office with Ellen White quotes about how children ought to behave in church, suggesting that his wife wasn’t doing her parental duties. Church school teachers regularly get called in and scolded over a parent’s complaint, whether valid or not.
Adventists have a lot of church administrators at many levels. Yet why does Aunty keep hearing that there is little support for those “in the field”? Pastors and teachers are, after all, just people. They deserve the freedom to do things you might disagree with. To have children who misbehave. To set boundaries around their personal lives.
Aunty’s advice to all of her readers: ease up on criticism—of everyone, and that includes pastors and teachers.
Aunt Sevvy
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