As you prepare to set down your family’s mission statement, it is more important than ever to approach the task prayerfully. Find a nearby church with early morning Mass or service. Listen with an open heart to the readings. Let them speak to you.
After a refreshing break, gather your papers together. Read them aloud together. You will begin to see some themes coming to the fore. You are going to use your dreams, your gifts and talents, and your values to create your family mission statement. There lies your family’s mission. It will be your family’s compass as you make your way through life together.
Your family mission statement declares who you are (as a family), and what your purpose is. Each family has a special purpose – distinct from that of any other family. You can see how that is true when you consider the activities you have undertaken over the weekend. No two families will ever have the exact same set of dreams, talents, spiritual gifts, or concerns.
The aim is to get your mission statement down to something digestible for all but the littlest members of your family. They’ll get the gist of what the family is about through the daily living of it. But for now, just concern yourselves with creating a first draft.
Using the notes you took, begin to group like with like – similar dreams, similar talents and gifts, similar concerns, activities and values. Try to distill each of those lists to come up with one or two words or phrases that encompass and describe their same-ness. When you are satisfied, you can have a go at making your first draft.
Using the following formula, you will have a workable and usable mission statement.
“We will use our [talents and gifts], to act with [values] through our [activities] for the good of [areas/people of concern].”
You can continue to hone down your mission statement, change it around, and refine it until you are confident that it represents your dreams and desires for your family. But the above example makes a good start.
Now, how do we get there? We know where we want to go. But we have also got to know where we are. And we have to make some key decisions about aspects of our family life in order to map out the road ahead.
First, You’re going to take a good look around you, assess where you are, how satisfied you are with where your family is today, given the exercise of Friday evening. Are you focusing on your family? Does everything you do center around your spouse and children? Or are you struggling to balance the two? If you aren’t centering on your family, you are going to find it difficult, if not impossible, to fulfill your mission as a family.
What things are interfering with your mission? Work? Lack of, or weak faith foundation? Extracurricular activities? Hobbies? “Friends”? Technology? School?
Are these things which can be dispensed with, or must they be somehow modified to fit our mission?
You may not get to every decision in this weekend retreat, but you will make a start, particularly on the most important elements. You can continue to build your road map through family chapters (meetings), and you may want to schedule an annual or semi-annual retreat in order to further tune your family’s mission and road map according to how your life changes. All good instruments occasionally need a re-calibration.
What a wonderful gift you will have to give your children when they are grown! They will be well-equipped to continue and pass on this tradition to their children. And they will have strong families right from the beginning, ready to live out their special purpose.
**Remember to save your notes. You’ll want to refer to them again and again throughout your Family Centered Living™ journey!
