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At the age of 44, I can say that I am unashamedly a “daddy’s girl.”  As Father’s Day 2017 is upon us, I find myself retrospective and thinking through the impact of my own dad on my life.  This post is not only for you ministry families out there, but is also letter—of love and gratitude–to my daddy.

Let me tell you a little about my daddy.  He talks of knowing from as far back as he can remember that he was created to serve the Lord and it was clear that God’s hand was on his life from an early age.  He was born into a home of very modest means in the panhandle of Florida—his dad was a plumber and his mom worked on and off in a local retail store to make ends meet.  They lived in a house my grandfather built from leftover wood he got from the navy base shipyard.  He was the youngest of 3 with his sister being the oldest and then a brother.  At the age of 5, he was diagnosed with leukemia and basically sent home to die.  Similar to the biblical story of Hannah and how she surrendered her son Samuel to the Lord, my grandmother told me the story of standing beneath the tall oak trees that sheltered their home and through tears she asked for God to save her son.  She promised she would raise him to know and love the God of his salvation.  God completely healed him and dad made a recovery that was nothing short of a miracle.  Before the age of 10, he began singing and playing the piano throughout area churches and even performed regularly on a local weekly radio program.  At the age of 12 he preached his first sermon for a youth night and then while he was in college, a Billy Graham crusade that was on at a friend’s house gave him even more clarity about the direction for ministry.  He knew his calling was for him to preach the word and pastor.  My dad’s life is a life that has been an example of integrity and a life lived in service and obedience to his calling.

As a pastor’s kid, I have seen the good, the bad and the ugly of church life.  Like many PK’s, I struggled through rebellion and making my faith my own rather than just settling for my parents’ faith.  I have felt the sting of “godly” people doing ungodly things and the heartache and confusion of my own family being their target.  I understand, now, the financial toll of a sacrificial life of ministry but I can also say that I have seen the fulfillment and passion that that same life can bring.  My parents were not perfect by any means and they would be the first to admit their failures.  As a product of their life of ministry, though, I can say there is so much that they did right.  How do I know?  I know this because I have a love for the church that grows more and more with time, I am able to look back on my relationship with my parents without the weight of tremendous longing of unmet needs from them in my childhood, I am pursuing a life of ministry, myself, through counseling and finally, my love, respect and admiration for my parents only grows with each passing year.  Ministry dads, here are 5 things I believe that my dad did for me as I was growing up “in the fishbowl” of ministry that helped me get to where I am today:

1. Live Authentically. I have always been able to see that who my dad is at home is the same person that the world sees.  What he said and did matched up and I didn’t have to ever feel like I had to compromise my own authenticity to protect my dad’s failures (aka= cover for him).
2. Make a Habit of Giving Your Family Your Best—Not Just the Leftovers. As a kid, I saw this modeled at mealtimes when inevitably the phone would ring for my dad and we saw him tell the person on the other line that he would have to call them back because he was eating dinner with his family.  My dad mostly served bi-vocationally and so he had to balance his responsibilities at the church with another job but I always felt he was there for me—even in the teen years and I remember thinking he was around way too much!  In my professional and personal interactions with the adult children of ministry families, I have heard all too often about resentments they have toward the church because they believe the church took their dad away from them or that dad’s best went to the church.
3. Love and Value Their Mom. Dad may have been the pastor but he and mom were partners in ministry.  Dad showed gratitude and appreciation to her in front of us as kids but also with other people.  He was her protector and especially in the teen years, he demanded that she be respected by us but also others.
4. Give Them Permission to Be Imperfect. One of the most life-changing and affirming things my dad told me was in my teens when my rebellion was in full force.  I was feeling the weight of expectations as well as the judgement of church and community members –to say the right thing, do the right thing, WEAR the right thing (those with teenage daughters understand what I am saying), be at everything, volunteer for everything.  After all, I was the “Pastor’s kid” for crying out loud!  If the pastor kid didn’t get it right then how would that reflect on the church (or so some people thought).  Daddy reminded me that HE was the pastor—not me.  He reminded me of who I was– that I was his daughter, a member of the Boyd (that’s my maiden name) family and that I had committed my life to Christ.  He reminded me that all of those did come with responsibilities but not one of them called me to be perfect.  I think the biggest thing he did in that conversation was release me from the judgement of others and assured me of his love and my heavenly Father’s love despite my imperfections.
5. Passionately and Faithfully Pursue Your Calling. Through all of life’s up’s and down’s (and we had plenty of them) daddy always centered his life on his calling to serve the Lord.  Certain seasons may have looked drastically differently from what he may have envisioned for his life of ministry (not even being on staff but serving in lay ministry or pursuing business ownership but doing interim work at churches on the weekends), but as his daughter, I saw my daddy faithful to the God he loves and passionate for the work God called and continues to call him to do.