Growing up, that’s what my friend Mark hated about church – Sunday mornings meant stiff pants from Sears, uncomfortable shoes, and a whole fairly rigorous routine that wasn’t replicated in any other part of life. And if you were a preacher’s kid, that routine and the pants that clothed it were unrelenting. Sunday morning. Sunday night. Wednesday night. Sunday School. Big church. Children’s choir. Training union. More big church. R.A.’s. Prayer meeting. More big church. Youth group. And on and on. It was predictable; never optional. Faking an illness was the standby strategy for interrupting the cycle, but it was, statistically speaking, a terribly ineffective strategy. Most weeks we went anyway, trying to maintain the diseased facade, purposed to enjoy church even less to "prove" that we should have been allowed to stay home.

This is a child’s memory of life as a PK, of course, and certainly not my adult perspective (well, not completely anyway). A few days ago, I
sat down and talked about that perspective with my youngest brother, Britt, my friend Mark, and Mark’s youngest brother Tim. We were all raised by preachers and preacher’s wives, and we’re all better and weirder because of it (as are our middle brothers, Will and Scott, who weren’t here for the conversation). Lucky for you, our friend Drew (who was a deacon’s kid, poor guy), was in the room with a tape recorder when we had this conversation. It now resides on the ComChurch website in two parts as the latest episode in an ongoing series of podcasts. Check it out (right click to download):

Part One
Part Two

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