Our Family Mission Statement

Just over a year ago, my husband I attended a marriage retreat weekend at Winshape Retreats in Rome, GA, where we had the pleasure of hearing Dr. Rob Rienow of Visionary Family Ministries present a Visionary Marriage weekend (you can read the book too, if you want), eat great food, rest, and participate in super cool high ropes challenge.

(Side note – Winshape. Awesome. Food. Relaxation. Hospitality. Amaze sauce. Expensive. Yes. Worth it. Totally. Of course, if you can do a Visionary Marriage weekend, do that. Instead. Or also. Your call. Carry on.)

While we were there, we started discussing the idea of having a Family Mission Statement – a written document that would remind us of our priorities when it comes to raising our family, our work, any ministry opportunities, and more.

In our minds, this Mission Statement was meant to be a daily reminder of the ins and outs of marriage and parenting while also being long-lasting as our children grow. We didn’t include specifics because the specifics change in each season.

Why Have a Family Mission Statement

Why would we want to have a Family Mission Statement anyways?

Well, I did a quick little dictionary search on what a mission statement is and here’s what it says:

a formal summary of the aims and values of a company, organization, or individual.

So in our case, we wanted a formal summary of our goals (to disciple our children and impact God’s kingdom) as well as our values (glorifying God).

I’ll write more on this next week.

Was it hard to write?

Yes, and no. Mostly it was taking the next…ya know, forever, and getting it into a sentence or two that seemed hard. It really wasn’t. But like I said, I’ll give you more tips next week and even some examples.

But this doesn’t say what you DO.

Exactly. Right now, our kids are small. And what we do to disciple them right now is different than it will be in 5 or 10 years. And frankly, sometimes it’s different day to day. But if this is in our head each day as our goal and mission, then we can always find ways to be intentional in encouraging their faith development.

So you’re planning on using this forever?

Maybe. One day, when the kids are older, I’d love to have their in-put on what it means to be on-mission in our family. Until then because this lacks specifics such as “memorizing 1 Bible passage each week” we have a lot of freedom in this so that we can use it for a long time.

Why did you pick Hebrews 12?

Well, that’s good question. As we were talking about and praying about our mission statement, I kept hearing this verse over and over again. It’s a reminder to us that our great cloud of witnesses – our children first – need to see us running this race throughout ours and their whole lives.

How do you use it day-to-day?

Ours actually hangs in our kitchen. It is not fancy, although I would love to make it fancy at some point. It’s right where we do most of our life so I see it all the time. There’s so much 1 inch view in the day to day of parenting that by seeing it, I remember that 10,000 foot view, or in this case, a multi-generational view of our family’s goals.