Or, daughters be Pastors' wives, in North America. Unless... they have a genuine calling from God. I am neither a Pastor nor a Pastor's wife. I was a PK - Pastor's Kid. My mom and dad were pastors of a small Chinese Church in Malaysia. My childhood was fabulous in many ways - we were always surrounded by people. There was a lot of respect from the people in the congregation - no matter how nasty the Pastor was, they just loved him and his family - simply because he was God's "elect". My dad had struggled with anger management all his life and it got quite scary at times (as in afraid for your lives type scary). However, my mom stuck with him for the sake of the ministry and for the sake of the kids. Growing up as a PK, one learns a lot about the inner workings of the church. Based on my experience as a kid of a Pastor who was definitely far from perfect, I really did not have a whole lot of respect for Pastors - to me, they were simply people who could not get into a proper program in University, therefore, they had to go to Bible college. I equated them to people who got a general Arts degree and could not have a real career when they got out of school (I know, I just offended a whole pile of people here - please pardon me for being so candid). Oh, and I also thought that they were really lazy people who needed to go and get a real job. Due to the hard life my mom had, she wanted to make sure that we all got very well educated so that we had more choices in our lives. Well, I became an Engineer, my sister became a Teacher and my brother was the head of the Canadian Operations for a software company based in the USA (he took Computer Science and Economics in University).
As kids, we played "pastor" - I guess that is what PKs do. We would pretend to baptize people when we are in the swimming pool. My brother would preach to his teddy bears. Yup, he lines them up and preaches to them. I think that was the first sign that he had a calling on his life.
My brother, the very successful business man felt the calling of God to pioneer a church. We were all ok with that decision, as long as, he was still working full time, doing "real" work and not "mooching" off God's people, the church. Well, he also wanted to make the millions before committing to full time ministry. Then one day, he announced that he was going into full time ministry - quitting his "real" job - and he had not made the millions yet. You should have heard us, the Pastor's family, trying to dissuade our brother/son from making the BIG mistake. You should have heard my mom - she did NOT want her son to go into full time ministry - she knew how difficult it was. She told my brother, "People respect you now because your Tithe cheque is bigger than your salary. But, watch out - they will not be as nice when you get a full salary from the church". My brother told me that he simply could not ignore God's calling anymore - God wanted him to trust Him and not on his own strength. I marvelled at his wife, who supported his decision whole heartedly - perhaps it's because she did not know what being a Pastor's wife entailed. (I understand from my brother now that she really does not enjoy being a PW :-)). I think if she knew then what she knows now, she may have opposed the decision more.
I now have a slightly different view point... (to be continued)
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