I suppose I should begin by explaining myself. When I wrote the requested biography that sidebars this column, I referred to myself as a “self-proclaimed church brat.” I can imagine some elevated eyebrows wondering what that reference was about.

I am a preacher’s kid. In addition to being a PK, I was a very late child, so for most of my childhood I might as well have been an only child, as my five siblings were all off to college and work. I hung around the church since it was next door to our house, and I hung around adults since they were the only ones there. I went on calls with my dad and to countless church events with my mother. I learned much in the process. I learned that clergy are both human and holy, and that the life of a pastor’s wife requires more than a few gifts of the Spirit. And because my father’s office was in the parsonage, I also learned from early on to keep confidences, take messages carefully, and speak politely with adults. Such were the responsibilities and behavior my parents expected. At the time I never thought of myself as different because of my father’s collar.

Little research has been done on preachers’ kids. (We tend to make headlines only for misbehavior.) So I thought I would do a Google search to see what I might learn about PKs today. Should we be surprised that the top hit was preacherskids.com, a site “dedicated to the men and women who endured and enjoyed a way of life that ‘laymen’s kids’ can't understand”? Another site includes not only a twelve-step recovery program for PKs but commentary on living in glass houses, otherwise known as parsonages. You can even buy a T-shirt that reads, I’m a preacher’s kid. What’s your excuse?

The sense one gets after visiting these sites is that the daughters and sons of clergy have been badly damaged as a result of growing up in the shadow of the church, thanks to congregational members who hold them to impossibly high standards and to parents whose standards are even higher. In my family we all knew we would regret doing anything that might embarrass our parents, but that expectation is hardly limited to PKs. Perfection is an unfair standard to impose on any children.

Probably because I lived in such an adult world, my memories are less about adult expectations and more of how other children saw me. Years after moving away from the church in which I was baptized, I was asked to return to speak for the family at a congregational anniversary celebration. A woman approached me and introduced herself. I remembered her as a peer from Sunday School. After we exchanged greetings, her next comment left me speechless: “You always got to be the Virgin Mary in the Christmas pageants.” What do you say to that? That my mother directed and cast the annual programs? That my name fit the part?  That I had a little doll they used for Baby Jesus? My sister, who observed this exchange, was stunned by the forty-year grudge, but afterward began to recall stories of her own years in that congregation and the dissonance we felt, no matter our age. We were seen by others as privileged, but we hardly saw ourselves that way.

I have a friend, also a PK and now a pastor herself, who likes to tease me when I confess that I trace my interest in church history to the conversations in the parsonage where I grew up. But another friend, son of a Presbyterian pastor, would likely come to my defense. As we compared notes about our shared experiences, he grew pensive and said only, “It marks you.” It does. I had only been at college a matter of days when I became friends with the woman who remains my closest friend today. In reflecting on our early bond many years later, we are convinced that it was largely due to our shared experience as preachers’ kids.

That mark my friend spoke of often finds PKs following in their clergy parents’ career path. In a 2002 study on PKs from the Pulpit & Pew research on pastoral leadership project at Duke University, Jackson Carroll, emeritus director of the project, reported that clergy who grew up as PKs gained an early perspective on ministry and tended to be more active in youth groups, often serving as leaders of those groups. Carroll’s study, admittedly small and recognizing denominational differences, offered limited conclusions. His final observation, however, is perhaps most telling: Carroll wonders why fewer PKs are going into ministry than they did previously. Several years ago researchers in the Missouri Synod confirmed Carroll’s conclusion, reporting a downward trend among LCMS church workers, whose ranks formerly had included many more children of rostered church workers. The implications of that finding mark a change that needs to be taken seriously by all who participate in the preparation of church workers.

More personally, the mark reflects lessons learned. From my father, this church brat learned to live in, and love, the church. But I also learned the importance of being oneself. He may have never said these exact words, but my dad’s consistent message was, “Never take yourself so seriously that no one else will.”