Setting the course for your family this year

Yes, this post is late.

My apologies. As life is a bit full at the moment, interruptions come and stuff happens and this beautiful mess of life is teeming with abundant chaotic joy.  And these precious kids I have, time is so short with them! And this weather we’re having is too glorious to pass up so instead of writing this morning we took a long hike to the produce stand for a backpack full of zucchini and then munched homemade chocolate chip cookies perched in the sunshine on the sidewalk curb.  There you have it. My honest confession.

Oh there is so much I want to write to you! SO much, people! The strange thing about LIFE is that when it’s full it speaks the most and when we’re up to our eyeballs in God’s glorious adventure we rarely have time to write it all down! So my apologies at the lateness and the lack and I will write more later, but for now I had promised a few people I would re-share this information on Creating a Family Mission Statement.

It’s a fun process, and when life comes hard and fast and dozens of choices present themselves each day, our mission statement centers back on the vision of what God wants for your family. So, if you haven’t yet created a Family Mission Statement (even if you a family of one!), now’s a great time. We used a fun online tool that helps you craft your own statement. 

Although I never dreamed in a million years we would be living the sort of life-adventure that we are, when I look at our family mission statement … it fits. It’s a full, fun, frustrating, faith-filled adventure, and at times I wonder what on earth we’re doing, but it fits with the vision God has given us for our family.

So, what are you doing tonight? Take some time to pray, dream, draft, and use this fun online tool to draft up a Family Mission Statement. And just for fun, here is ours…

Patterson Mission Statement:

As a family we seek to glorify God by daily embodying the gospel in intentional ways: Through generosity, simplicity, faithfulness, joy, humility, grace, care, and thoughtful expressions of love.

• We will nurture our spiritual growth and love relationship with Jesus by making personal worship, prayer, and Bible times of primary importance.
• We will be careful and intentional about time commitments, guarding family evenings and date nights while inviting others freely into our lives.
• We will grow in sacrificial giving by increasing the money given away to international causes and missions while spending less on ourselves each year.
• We will take care of our bodies, souls, and spirits by staying physically fit, nourishing our bodies with real food, and carving out regular time for rest, renewal, relaxation, and recreation.
• We will seek to make every moment an opportunity to teach, shape, nurture, and inspire our children to be Christ-followers. We will seek to make the gospel attractive by living in grace, joy, and freedom. We will seek to instruct and shape their hearts rather than merely modify their behavior. We will seek to motivate them by love and grace rather than pride and fear. We will praise their obedience, humility, generosity, godly ambition and courage.
• We will measure “success” by whether our and our children’s hearts are being increasingly conformed to the image of Christ.

{Have a beautiful day. Thanks for reading.}