Living in public
Feeling watched because your choices can be treated as a reflection of your parent, your family, or the church.
A little of my story
I know the life from the inside.
My sister and I grew up as pastor's kids. Our family helped plant churches in South Carolina, Maryland, and New York, and that life gave me things I'm genuinely thankful for — music, confidence around people, community, service, and relationships I still value today.
But being a pastor's kid also meant growing up in the spotlight. People knew who our father was. Our behavior didn't always feel like it belonged only to us — it could reflect on him, the family, and the church. There were expectations about where we should be, how we should behave, what we should believe, and how much of ourselves we were expected to give to ministry.
Sometimes there wasn't much room left to simply be young.
- To spend a weekend doing nothing.
- To study.
- To make mistakes privately.
- To disagree without it becoming rebellion.
- To wonder what you believe.
- To figure out who you are when nobody is watching.
I experienced that pressure myself. There were periods when church and family responsibilities meant traveling back and forth every weekend while I was trying to adjust to college and keep up academically.
But experiencing it myself was one thing.
Watching my sister go through her own stress and pressure from the same life was different.
When something hurts you, you can rationalize it. You can tell yourself to tough it out. You can wonder whether you're being selfish, difficult, ungrateful, or rebellious.
Seeing someone you love carry it makes that much harder to do.
And over the years, I've had pastor's-kid friends who understand these things almost immediately. No long explanation required. Different families, different churches, different stories — but that familiar feeling of living somewhere between love, faith, responsibility, expectation, and the need to become your own person.
That's where PK Connection comes from.
Not from believing that pastors are bad parents.
Not from hating the church.
Not from rejecting everything our upbringing gave us.
It comes from believing something very simple:
Pastor's kids are their own individual people.
Your parents may have been called to ministry.
You were still allowed to be a kid.
And if you've ever felt like you were the only one struggling with that tension:
Come in.
You don't have to explain everything here.
— Ted