How Churches can care for their pastor's children

The Gospel Coalition blog featured this helpful post from Chad Bettis. While all seven of his suggestions are sound, I most appreciated the first:

1. Give grace to the pastor's children on Sunday. Sunday is a workday for his family unlike any other person's workday. While her husband is ministering, a wife is parenting alone. The pastor's kids are often the first ones to arrive at the church building and the last ones to leave. You can minister to his family by giving his children grace, talking with them, and enjoying them. When his children are young, you can also offer to help his wife.

 I have long been suprised at how infrequently this matter is discussed in the literature on pastoral work. In my more cynical moments, I suspect this may be due to the fact the literature is produced and the classes taught by older men whose memories of parenting young children are rather faded and whose generations' fathering methodologies were much more distant than those current today. At any rate, I'm grateful for some public acknowledgement that Sundays can be the hardest day of the week for a pastor and his wife, and their children often suffer as a result.

To be fair, many pastors with whom I've spoken about this issue do receive the help Mr. Bettis suggests from one or two families in their congregations, and this has been our family's experience as well. In the cases where that help is not offered, however, the burden can be considerable, and it is often exacerbated by Church members who would rather criticize how others manage their burdens then offer to help carry them. On behalf of my profession, I hope Mr. Bettis's post goes viral.