I'm an ex Christian and also a pastors kid. The connection between these two facts alone is something I can write a book on. How the pressure to perform and be a good representation of my parents made everything else painful and harmful about Christianity much worse.
However, Ive really struggled with the fact that a lot of pastors kids I know are still Christians and some of which went into the ministry themselves.
The unifying theme that I see for the ones that 'stayed' is that they had a fairly stable church environment for their childhood and only had 1-2 different churches.
My family on the other hand went through 6 different churches from my birth until I turned 21 and fully left the church. Im counting a different church as a different name and location/ building as some did have some overlapping members of the congregation but at the most generous definition of 'different church' I still had at least 4.
Almost every time we had a different church was because of some situation where my dad got voted out for various reasons or a few too many families left and the church couldn't support themselves.
All this context to ask, particularly so for pastors kids, how many churches did your family lead?
My theory is that a lot of PKs that stayed did because the church was a stabilizing force so it became hard / less reason to leave.
Thanks!
Edit: I want to make clear that for me leaving the church and Christianity it was not because of the lack of stability in the church(es), I left because of a deep misalignment between what I believe and what the church teaches.
Likewise I'm not saying people stay in the church only because it was a place of stability for them.
Im simply testing a theory of correlation not necessarily causation
I got lucky and got on the Mission hi-fi liquidation sale to snag a pair of zx4's for about $412 all in, shipped!
Seemed way too good to be true considering this pair of speakers msrp but I have them in my living room playing beautiful, detailed, and clear music. Powered by a onkyo tx 8470.
For a while I was rocking my beloved Athena technologies as f2's I got on a Facebook marketplace deal for $50 some time ago. As much as I love them I have been starting to look for an upgrade as the Athena as f2s played amazingly they were kinda ugly in fair cosmic condition and the gold paint of the 00's is still kinda ugly.
The zx4's are just absolutely gorgeous with the glossy piano black and white woofers. They are likely still in the break in phase so I don't know their full sound quality but so far they are bringing out details I've never heard before on songs listened to a ton.
Listening to Deafheaven 'sunbather' album on vinyl now and those tremlolo picked guitars just ring out and sing and I'm hearing each and every note picked.
Upgrading from the as f2s to the zx4's feels like buying your first nice car on a killer deal after driving your surprisingly good but beat up first car.
I'll likely be keeping the Athena technologies as f2s for a while as they are still great speakers but it was time to upgrade.
It was a dream
Going from very excited to laughing at the absurdity