Transcript
Ben Fallon: Thanks for joining us again on “Ask Paul Tripp.” The last question you answered for the show, Paul, was, “Should My Kids Play Sports on a Sunday?” Since you were a local church pastor for decades, naturally you and Luella and your kids were always in church on a Sunday, so playing sports was just never an option, at least for your family's schedule. So, here's a similar question from a pastor. “How can my wife and I help our kids appreciate church instead of it being a routine that the family has to participate in because it's Dad's job?”
Paul Tripp:Well, I think there are two issues here. Here's my introduction, you want to raise children that love the church and love that community and love that they're loved by that community. We moved from Scranton, Pennsylvania to Philadelphia. In Scranton, I was a pastor, and we lived in walking distance; so did most of the members of our church; it was a very close-knit, deep-fellowship community. Our children, now living in Philadelphia, talked as much about missing adults as they did children because they were loved by those adults. They were part of their everyday lives; that's a beautiful thing! So, you want your children to love that community, the church.
I think there are two things that you have to deal with. One is, often children in ministry families, pastoral families, feel like church just takes their dad away from them. He's never with us on Sunday morning; he's distracted and unavailable, and he's often gone for meetings. And a child can joke and begin to have this jealousy that the church gets more of my dad than I do. So, you want to be very, very careful that your children don't grow up with that bitterness.
I think the other thing is often pastors are too vocal with their family about problems in the church and about people who are not responding well to their leadership or people are critical about their preaching. Sometimes that happens because it's raw in the car on the way home from Sunday worship, but the pastor's hurting. And so, I want to shelter my children from that. Look, the church is imperfect. The church is a mess, but it's God's holy, wonderful gospel mess. And I want my children to love the church, and I think often the church, as a job, gets in the way of the church as a beautiful community of love and gospel instruction.
BF: Thanks, Paul. I have another question here from a pastor regarding family participation on a Sunday, slightly different. “How frequently can I use my kids as sermon illustrations?”
PT: So, the fact of the matter is your children are on view because they happen to be the children of the most public person in the church, the pastor. So that's an issue already. I think you must be very, very, careful about exposing your children in illustrations that put too much focus on them and their struggles. Two things I would say about this in my experience. One is, if I told stories about my children, the stories were always about me, about my struggles and that my children were the backdrop of the stories.
The second thing I would say, when I wrote Age of Opportunity, my very first book, it's about parenting, I wanted the book to be real. I went and asked my children if I could tell our story. I wanted them to say, “Yes, dad, do that.” And all of our children said, sort of laughing, “Yeah, if it can be helpful to other people, sure.” And so, I was able to do that. I think if you're going to tell a teenager's story, go to that teenager that week and say, “I'm planning to use this illustration; I would never do that if that would hurt you or needlessly focus on you in ways you don't want to be focused on; and if you're not comfortable with that, I'm not going to do that.” I mean, my first congregation is my family, and I can't forget that congregation in trying to minister to the larger congregation of the church.
BF: Thanks, Paul, and thank you, listener, for tuning in. Paul has a new devotional out titled, Sunday Matters. It's his latest book with 52 entries to prepare your heart and your family's heart for corporate worship. We pray that pastors, pastor’s wives, pastor’s kids and congregations will be blessed by each entry. It's available at paultripp.com/Sunday.
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