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The life of a preacher's son |
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Written by Donovan Henderson
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Wednesday, 12 April 2006 |
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When I was in school, I always got a kick out of this question: “So, your dad’s a priest, huh?”
I’d wait and give a quizzical look.
Faced with the look, a few people would think a little harder and immediately recognize the inherent fault in their question.
Others would have to be prodded.
“Well, if my dad was a priest, I wouldn’t be here, would I?”
Huh?
“Priests take vows of celibacy.” Pause. “They don’t get married and have kids.”
Ah.
My childhood and adolescence was spent in rural America — two towns in Kansas and a small city on the Eastern Plains of Colorado. Two were heavily settled by Germans from Russia, and the Catholic Church was and still is prominent. So, many of my classmates’ only connection to a man of the cloth was by way of a priest. The misunderstanding was understandable.
Preacher, pastor, minister, reverend, clergyman, chaplain, cleric, padre.
My dad has been an ordained Assemblies of God minister for more than 40 years. I’ve had a front-row seat to the richness and fullness fellowship with the faithful can bring to your life; and I’ve seen firsthand the fallibility of man, and how hate and shallow hearts shine more darkly when professed in the name of God.
During my first 18 years, attending church three times a week, I witnessed the simple humanity of a much-needed hug or a homemade meal taken to a struggling family’s doorstep. I cringed at vitriolic exchanges between “Godly” men about the church’s finances or doctrine and received sneers because my clothes weren’t churchy enough.
The question has been asked of me many times: “So, what’s it like to have a preacher for a father?”
It’s not an easy question to answer. So a shrug of the shoulders would usually suffice.
Throughout the years, the Henderson household put up the college students stranded in the blizzard, or the teenager with no where else to turn. Our house was a hotel for the evangelists and missionaries that came through town.
I loved the missionaries.
I sat at the feet of these men and women and soaked up their remarkable stories about their lives in exotic lands like Asia and Africa. They told tales of snakes the size of trees, of children on their death beds miraculously healed, and of narrowly escaping deadly military coups by riding in the car of the general leading the coup. No matter your beliefs, some stuff in this world defies explanation.
I never liked the evangelists.
They rolled into town in Cadillacs and Town Cars with cases of Aqua Net in their trunks, opinionated, usually overweight, and never with the “real-world” experiences that I found so endearing in missionaries. I argued with most of them about anything and everything. I always figured the Henderson house was marked through the evangelist grapevine: “Don’t go there, that Henderson boy is a twerp.”
I traveled the world.
As dad helped train ministers in Japan, my uncle and I tagged along to take in ancient mysteries of the Far East. We saw Hiroshima decorated in full, rich color in late August, marking another anniversary of that awful day in 1945.
I saw people at their lowest.
An estranged husband, drunk and enraged, was restrained by the men of the church after he stumbled into the sanctuary looking for his wife. A teenager and his girlfriend, goofing around at a youth conference, escaped serious injury after falling off a hotel’s second-floor walkway onto an ice-covered parking lot.
It’s dad’s job to tend to the emotional wounds of the angry husband, and hold the hand of the distraught, panicked teenager. If ever there was a job where you never punch out, it’s that of a pastor.
You’re a preacher, plumber, mechanic, doctor, counselor, accountant, leader, husband and father — and that’s a slow day.
A typical kid, such things didn’t make an impact on me until later in life.
So now, when I get the “your dad’s a preacher” question, I’ll still shrug my shoulders, pause for a minute, and then add, “You know, it’s been pretty cool.”
NEXTnc assistant editor Donovan Henderson has lived in Colorado for 23 years and is a University of Northern Colorado graduate.
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