Family Mission Statement

When my children were younger, we brainstormed as a family and came up with a "family mission statement."  My husband has always been "mission statement minded," so he wanted our family to have an idea of what we stood for as a unit.  We just re-visited our family mission statement and updated it.  Here are some of the things we did as part of our mission statement:

We came up with a vision of what our family was to focus on, what we were to be in our community.  Some examples from our updated mission statement (I can't find a copy of the earlier one right now -- if I do I will post some of the examples later!):

*To be involved in community service and church ministry.

*To mentor and be mentored.

*To step up to leadership positions.

*To maintain solid Bible study and prayer life.

*To acknowledge others' efforts in our lives.

*To continually cultivate an environment of excellence within our family.

And an additional 5 or 6 items.

We also stated our family's PURPOSE, and then listed individual strategies for each of us.  Then we listed what our vision was for each of our futures.

We then typed them out, shrunk them to wallet size, and gave them to each of our family to carry around (although I haven't gotten this far with our updated one yet).

If you aim for nothing you'll hit it every time...  I think it was great that even at young ages as a family we stated what we stood for and what our purpose was in the world.  I believe it strengthened our family and made us realize that we had a mission together.

Challenge:  Sit down as a family and brainstorm on YOUR family's mission statement.  Include each person's strengths, goals and visions.  And then hold each other accountable to your mission statement!