Rachel Turner’s passion for parenting is well known to the hundreds of people who have followed her parenting course, read her books and heard her speak. Warm and practical, wise and encouraging, she helps families thrive and grow in faith together but rejects any attempt to see her as a parenting guru:
‘I never want to say, “parent like me”; I want to say, “parent like you”. And that applies to all our Parenting for Faith books and resources.* This isn’t about me and my parenting. I’m a parent like everyone else, and like everyone else I’m just trying to figure it out. I am on the journey and my books reflect that; they take the research and the collected wisdom and experience and show how it can be applied in each family.’
Her latest book, Parenting as a Church Leader: Helping your family thrive, might sound a little ‘niche’, but travelling the country, speaking to parents from every kind of family, Rachel has become more and more aware of the unique pressures on church leaders’ families.
‘I’ve been in church leadership myself for many years,’ she explains, ‘both before I had a child and after I’ve had a child, and I know there’s a sort of unique experience in being a parent and a church leader. Church leaders have so many demands and expectations heaped upon them, and I wanted to encourage and empower them in their own families before they’re expected to help other families.’
According to Rachel, the particular pressures of life in the vicarage or manse include the lack of boundaries between home and work and the weight of expectation from colleagues and congregations:
‘Parenting is stressful and filled with guilt, and no one ever feels that they’re really nailing parenting. So trying to figure out parenting, while doing your job, while being actively watched by people who often have strong opinions about what you should and shouldn’t be doing, is incredibly stressful. I call it parenting in the goldfish bowl.’
She also knows there’s a widespread belief that children of church leaders inevitably struggle:
‘There is a stereotype out there which is that the child of the church leader is the most badly behaved, or the snobbiest, or the most self-centred, or the one who is going to go off the rails… In my work with ministerial training colleges it’s one of the questions that comes up most often: “How do I protect my family?”, “Is this going to cost my kids?”, “I’m worried that my kids are going to hate church.”’
But part of Rachel’s mission is to highlight the opportunities as well as the dangers for church leaders’ families:
‘Yes, there are lots of things that we need to look out for and lots of things that can go wrong, but once we see those things, we can positively parent around them. We keep forgetting about the amazing positives: our children are perfectly positioned to see God at work in the lives of so many different people. They are placed in a community of loving and authentic people who are trying to follow God. They are placed as part of the body of Christ and have wonderful opportunities to discover where they’re called and what it’s like to lead. They’re exposed to those in need, those with different backgrounds, those who are blessing their neighbours. They’re placed where they can come to an understanding of life and of service to God – what His promises are and that He loves us – and that is a beautiful place to be.’
The four main parenting principles in this book are specifically designed for helping church leader families flourish in their unique ministry context: children need to feel connected to their parents and prioritised in the competition of needs between the church and family; their privacy needs to be covered and they need to be empowered in their own faith journeys.
‘As a parent, if I have a list of things not to do, I find myself painted into a corner of fear, and I didn’t want to give church leaders a list of things that could damage their children. I wanted to give them positive ways to parent, rather than lay a minefield of failure. That’s why the book isn’t about 1,000 things for church leader parents not to do; the book is about four things that are really healthy and that will build a wonderful framework for your kid to thrive, not just survive.’
Rachel Turner is an author, speaker and BRF’s Parenting for Faith pioneer. Her books include...
Parenting for Faith, part of The Bible Reading Fellowship (BRF), inspires and equips parents to spiritually parent their children for faith, and resources churches to provide the supportive community that makes this possible.
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