“How can you not know the answer? Your father is the Pastor.”

“The Pastor’s wife is usually part of the women’s ministry.”

“How can a Pastor be depressed? He’s supposed to be the Pastor.”

These statements probably sound familiar. After all, the Church does have expectations of not just the Pastor, but his family as well. These expectations – whether uttered out loud or whispered behind their backs – exert pressure on Pastors and their families.

This was the subject of the workshop “Life in a Glass House: Understanding and Supporting the Ministers’ Family” that was part of the recent Christian Mental Health Conference 2025.

Conducted by Principal Counsellor of Fei Yue Community Services, Chan Earng Han, the workshop sought to help participants:

• Understand the unique challenges faced by ministers and their families
• Foster empathy and awareness to create a more compassionate church culture
• Explore resources to help them flourish at work and increase resilience

Using the metaphor of a glass house, Earng Han talked about how the Pastor and his family often live under close public scrutiny, yet they have few outlets to share their difficulties. 

Principal Counsellor of Fei Yue Community Services, Chan Earng Han, shared research on the stress Pastors and their families feel because of high expectations of them. Photo courtesy of Fei Yue Community Services.

“We want to have a sense of what is happening to them, what they are going through. Then we can choose how to respond to them as part of the congregation, as the spouse of a minister to better support them and their mental health,” said Earng Han.

In that way, we can help the Pastor break out of his glass house.

Is it okay not to be okay?   

“Ministers are frequently expected to provide unrelenting emotional, spiritual and mental support to their congregants without themselves having access to adequate support mechanisms,” said Earng Han, citing research findings.

Pastors are a pillar of support to all, yet for many Pastors, there is little to no support offered to them. This can cause six silent struggles. 

1. Emotional and psychological strain

Many Pastors experience emotional and psychological strain because they do not feel they can seek mental health support or share their vulnerabilities.

This, said Earng Han, creates emotional strain made worse by the belief that Pastors need to be perfect, especially in their spiritual walk, and prevents them from seeking help.

“To be willing to get help, the Pastor has to learn that it is safe for him to do so. He needs to experience that he will not be judged,” said Earng Han.

“It’s also important for us to appreciate this and ask: Am I or am I not part of this factor that stops my Pastor from being able to show vulnerability?”

2. Expectations and perfectionism

Not only do the expectations of perfection prevent Pastors from showing vulnerability or seeking help, it also makes them afraid that, if they reveal their vulnerabilities, they will be perceived as weak, and that will undermine their leadership.

3. Relational and social isolation

Suffering in silence becomes the only (unhealthy) option which intensifies feelings of loneliness and isolation.

Being the Pastor, especially one that gets moved from church to church, often also makes it difficult to form close, personal relationships within the church.

“For example, you are a Youth Pastor, surrounded by young people. You might wonder: Who can attend to me? I can’t approach a youth,” said Earng Han.

4. Impact on family life

The expectations placed on the Pastor can create strain and tension within the household as well. Many Pastors’ families often sacrifice their own emotional needs to support the ministry. This leads to the family feeling neglected or emotionally distant.

5. Theological and spiritual conflict

Pastors are not exempt from theological doubts and personal crises of faith.

“What if I don’t experience God’s presence or feel like God has stopped talking to me. Can I talk to people about this? Church leaders? Associate Pastors?”

The inability to articulate and discuss these struggles is another type of isolation.

6. Lack of safe spaces for vulnerability

Many religious communities equate mental health struggles with spiritual failure or a lack of faith, leading ministers to suppress their emotional struggles out of fear of judgment, added Earng Han.

There is, therefore, a need to develop safe, non-judgmental spaces for ministers to share their experiences so as to address the mental health challenges that often go unnoticed.

Do you have unfair expectations of your Pastor’s kids?

Pastors’ children have stressors few other children of Christians face. They bear the weight of expectations from the congregation, suffer a lack of boundaries and privacy, and for some, live with constant change of churches as their fathers get posted to new churches.

All these can be summarised into three themes of expectations.

1. Having behaviour that is either very good or very bad

There does not seem to be an in-between. Either Pastors’ children are thought to be attending church every week, reading the Bible daily or presumed to be “crazy and wild”.

2. Participating actively at church

Expected to know all the answers at Sunday School or Youth Ministry, called to serve from a young age, asked to be involved in everything – more is demanded of Pastors’ children then any other children in church. 

3. Dressing in prescribed ways

Earng Han shared an anecdote about a Pastor’s child who pierced her ears only to have her mother “freaking out”, afraid of what the people in church might say.

Her father, the Pastor, replied: “We’ll tell them that it is her ear.”

Impact of expectation

Such pressure can impact Pastors’ children in five ways.

1. Feeling confused and overwhelmed

Often conflicting and unachievable, the expectations can cause Pastors’ children to be confused and overwhelmed.

2. Shame and guilt

They face thoughts like: “If I can’t meet your expectation, does it mean I am not a good enough Christian or person?” Struggling with that can produce shame and guilt.

3. Identity formation

Young people go through a stage where they figure out who they are, their values and beliefs, and likes and dislikes apart from their parents’.

“My parents are like this. But who am I? Other than being a Pastor’s child, who am I?” said Earng Han.

This is a difficult enough process for the average young person. With people observing their lives, commenting on their behaviour and placing expectations on them that may not be placed on their peers, the challenge of identify formation becomes greater.

4. Suffer in silence

Pastors’ children then learn to hide their vulnerability and suffer in silence. They learn to cope alone.

“This is not what we want to perpetuate. We hope that they feel safe to seek help,” said Earng Han.

5. Performance anxiety

Earng Han said: “We try to tell them, ‘You are loved and accepted as who you are.’ Yet when they are not performing to our expectations, they receive certain repercussions from us. How true is it, then, that there is unconditional acceptance and love?

“So it is harder for the younger people to make sense of the fact that we accept them for who they are, but we may not accept their behaviour.

“If we continue to have a set of expectations that are different for ministers’ children, they will feel anxious and they will learn the value that ‘I am only lovable if I meet certain expectations.’”

How should we respond?

It begins with the Pastor

The change begins with the Pastors who are “change agents who have a keen interest in finding a solution”. They have to become more aware of how the demands of their jobs affect their families.

“Talk about it. Don’t feel bad about talking about it,” urged Earng Han.

They also need to focus on balancing the demands of church and family, prioritising time that is solely focused on the family.

Congregants play a part

Members should examine the expectations they have of Pastors’ children and be mindful not to set standards of behaviour for them that they do not have for other people.

“Unrealistic demands cause undue stress on clergy children who are already dealing with other stressors associated with individual development and being in a clergy family,” said Earng Han.

“Although many demands of congregation members arise from legitimate needs, congregations should recognise that clergy families also have a legitimate need to be together and minimise intrusions on their family time.”

Resources upon which to draw

Earng Han then led the participants in an exercise to help them think of resources on which they can depend.

“There are inner resources that sustain you, such as your sense of purpose, or sense of humour or self-compassion.

“There are external resources that can support you, such as peers, books, rest.

“Then there are things that block you from fully using those resources such as fear of judgment, perfectionism, self-doubt.”

Listing internal and external resources, developing them and identifying the ones that are beneficial but missing are all things that Pastors and their families can use to cope with stressors.

Realising what things block the use of those resources and reducing those things is another way of managing stressors.

As he ended the workshop, Earng Han encouraged the participants to work on their resources: “What do you want to start doing or do more of? What do you want to stop doing or do less of?”

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