Family On Mission: Standing Fast in Cultural Currents
Editor’s Note: This article offers wisdom and encouragement from both Scripture and personal experience on the value of creating a family mission statement, especially in light of making big decisions in life. While it’s by no means a requirement for families to live faithfully before God, it can be a helpful practice to consider. We invite you to check out Episode 46 of our podcast (and related show notes) for even more tips on implementing this in your own home.
I grew up on the East Coast, and I am raising my children on the West Coast. This means my car carries boogie boards while my heart carries fear of currents. At their simplest, currents pull my brood of boys hundreds of yards from the place where we have set up our beach chairs; at their worst, they can cause grave danger.
Parenting as Christians within our present culture bears striking similarities to swimming at the beach. When we first dip our toes into the waters of parenting, we may not be aware of the strong, insidious currents around us. Without awareness and intentionality, we will be pulled along in the direction of culture. While we began with the best of intentions to live according to biblical values, we may find ourselves drifting without even realizing the power of the current.
To hold fast in these waters, our family has learned to place a few stakes in the sand. By knowing our core values as a family and regularly exiting the waters to realign with them, we are learning how to swim with intentionality and actually enjoy the process! Understanding who your family is and who you are seeking to become provides an anchor that holds you when you find yourself in the choppy waters of decision-making.
Anchored Intentionality
Broadly-speaking, every Christian family ought to have the same general destination: to glorify God and enjoy him forever, as the Westminster Shorter Catechism puts it. However, as seen in the glorious array of creation, our God delights in diversity. As David describes so succinctly in Psalm 139, our God knits nuanced personality, desires, and gifts into each of his image-bearers. When God creates families, he does a similar thing, combining people into a unit with unique purposes and good works![1]
When our children were tiny and I was beginning to feel the currents of parenting, my husband and I spent some time working on a family mission statement and identifying a handful of core values for our family. These values were nuanced in light of who we were and who we hoped to become. Thus, they were less like a checklist and more like a few guiding aspirations. Identifying this handful of values has anchored our family and served as a sieve for significant decisions:
Our mission statement: The Joseph family is built for God and others.
Our aspirational values: We aspire to be MODELS in every season of life (Missional, Observers, Developers, Enjoyers, Leaders, and Sufferers).
While those may seem like random words to the average ear, these words bleed with meaning for our family. They represent the core of who we believe God has made us and is still making us to be. They identify driving passions and gifts of ours that we long to pass on to our children, by God’s grace. These values have helped us when we were at loggerheads on important decisions regarding schooling, housing, and various day-to-day decisions.
There are as many ways to identify values and create a family mission statement as there are families! Some people make fancy crests to hang on walls, some people create jingles, some people use acronyms. When creating a mission statement for our unique family, some helpful tips we’ve learned are: 1) make it short and memorable, 2) set goals for both an overarching vision and the specific actions that flesh that out, 3) keep it timeless, and 4) root it in Scripture.[2] But even more important than the specific practice is the principle of living with anchored intentionality.
Moses prayed that God’s people would live intentionally, writing, “So teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom” (Psalm 90:12). The Apostle Paul struck a similar chord when he told the Ephesians, “Look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise but as wise, making the best use of the time, because the days are evil” (Ephesians 5:15–16).
By identifying who God has uniquely wired you and your family to be, you place stakes in the ground to help you from being pulled along by cultural currents or the tyranny of the urgent in parenting.
Deep Dependence
As the psalmist reminds us, “Unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it labor in vain. Unless the Lord watches over the city, the watchman stays awake in vain” (Psalm 127:1). While we desire to live with intentionality, we must remember to do so with deep humility and dependence.
We say with David, “You are my Lord; I have no good apart from you” (Psalm 16:2), and we agree with Jesus, who said, “Apart from me you can do nothing” (John 15:5). Everything we have and are comes from him as the source. Everything we hope to be and do is subject to him. We hold our plans loosely, but we hold our values tightly.
With anchored intentionality and deep dependence, we can walk toward the churning waters of parenting instead of fleeing in fear. With eyes fixed on the author and perfecter of our faith,[3] we continually reorient ourselves and realign our decisions with his designs. We do not become frantic, because we know that we will be led into his haven. In the meanwhile, we seek to enjoy the waters of parenting!
[1] Ephesians 2:10
[2] Here I am indebted to our dear friend, Dr. Dave Friese, for his wisdom on writing family mission statements.
[3] Hebrews 12:2
