Family: On Mission

It's necessary for a healthy family to have a mission, right? With young kids, we like to say, make that your neighborhood.

Be the person of peace in your neighborhood that Luke 10 talks about. Welcome to Family Life Today, where we want to help you pursue the relationships that matter most. I'm Ann Wilson.

And I'm Dave Wilson, and you can find us at familylifetoday.com or on our Family Life app. This is Family Life Today. OK, so you walk up to any family at a park, at a church, in a neighborhood and ask them, Mom and Dad, what's your mission for your family? What do they say? What's the goal?

I have asked that to multiple moms. You know what? I've seen you ask that. You walk around the park just bugging people. No, I don't. I've seen you do it.

I know. But I have asked that question to moms, like, oh, what do you hope? What do you dream for your kids?

Like, what is it? Almost 95 percent of the time, the response that I hear is, I just want them to be happy. And I agree. Don't we all want that for our kids? But how do you attain happiness? I don't want their lives to be happy. I want them to be, like, on fire.

I want them to change the world. And then you get into the reality, your kids are hitting each other and you hate school. It's like, oh, wait, how do I do this again? Yeah, and obviously we're bringing this up because families thrive when they have a mission. And most of the time, and you said 95 percent, it's probably at least 90 percent of mom and dad have never even got that through.

Like, really, what is our mission as a family and what is God's mission for our family? I think that's a good question. Yeah, and I tell you, we've got Jefferson Becki in the studio with us today, and I know Jefferson. First of all, welcome back. Thanks for having me back. Yeah, and you've thought a lot about this. I mean, you are a man on a mission. We're glad you thought about it.

No pressure. Seriously, when I'm around you, I was like, this guy is going somewhere. I'm going to change the world when I'm with him. And you're going there fast, too.

Just because of the speed of how I talk, but yeah, yeah. No, yeah, this is something I really care about. I mean, already a couple of things you guys just sparked that I was thinking of is, one is it's necessary for a healthy family to have a mission, right? And we'll talk about that in a second of what that means, how you can tease that out, et cetera. Another way to put it is if you don't have a shared enemy, then you become the enemy. So we always tell families, like, if you can't label or name a shared enemy, right?

And even as simple as saying, like, the forces of darkness are evil. Like, you know, that's shit. Like, we know what those are.

We can say this is in our city. It looks like X, Y, Z. Or it's something more specific. But if you don't have that, which most families don't, then you become each other's enemy. That's just, it's kind of like, you know, it's a classic adage of life that, like, basically, if you're not facing a direction with your team, then your team starts to eat each other.

That's basically, right? That's just, we can see that everywhere in the world. And it happens to families all the time.

So first of all, that one's true on the negative. On the positive side of that, how does a family find a mission? In our work, we try to lead a lot of families through that question. The first thing I would say that we've found out is that asking it that way or thinking about it that way tends to overwhelm people.

They kind of go, they kind of start to sink of like, oh man, that feels big. Yeah, they feel like I'm failing. Already I'm failing. So a couple of things I would say. One, there's one really practical thing I'll say in a second. But first, two, you just got to go back to Scripture.

It's like, well, you don't need to make it up because it's already in Scripture, right? We have been given a mission. And there's, what we say is there's two missions every family should have. There's the general and the particular.

The general is the Genesis one, which like every single family is following in the footsteps of the garden mandate, which is Genesis 2 15, the Lord God put them in the Garden of Eden to work it and to keep it. Your job is to find a garden and to work it and keep it. That's simple.

That's anything, by the way, too. And I think sometimes we hyper spiritualize it. We say like, oh, we need to go on mission for the Lord.

We need to go over here and do something really religious, whatever, right? No, you just need to find a garden and work it and keep it. Now, what's a garden? A garden is any place where you are making order out of chaos, right? That's what a gardener does. A gardener takes raw materials and they make something beautiful or they take raw materials and they feed someone. Those are the only two possibilities of a garden is to make something beautiful or to feed people. So where would that be in metaphorically?

Right. That's the first question I would ask a family is like, how is your team wired? How is your team given given certain resources, whether financially, whether emotionally, whether personality, like how is what are the resources of your team? How your kids are wired, the ages of them, the gifts, the talents, the wiring as well as the two parents. And how can you start to nudge those giftings and wirings and talents towards a particular garden, towards a particular place of making order out of chaos with young kids?

We like to say, make that your neighborhood. That's a really easy one where it's not overwhelming. It's not crazy. You don't feel like you're burnt because the one thing too is sometimes people take this and they start going and serving in church like crazy, which I love the church we serve in our church, et cetera. But there's also like, you can burn yourself out there real fast, especially with little kids.

I think that's a short play. I think the long play is how about you maybe don't serve in the church for the first 10 years of your family. How about you train your team so that then they're strong enough after 10 years to actually go serve the whole world or serve the church in a better capacity.

I think it's just like a short play for a long play is like train the team before you can go out. But the neighborhood is a really good one with little kids. We tell people like, man, make where you live a place of like, be the person of peace in your neighborhood that Luke 10 talks about. So remember that whether that's dinners, whether that's card for the neighbors, like it can actually like we, we lived in a neighborhood where we were the only Christians for five or six years. This last house we lived in and it was so fun to see, like I just was reflecting on the other day of like, man, when we started the neighborhood, we didn't know anyone. And we ended that neighborhood, like everyone, I don't want to be like prideful. Everyone loved us.

Like we just like, I don't want to be prideful. Everyone loved us. But here's what, first of all, I'll say we're the only, it was eventually neighborhood where we're the only family in that neighborhood. So everyone else was older. Everyone else was, it was a lot of older. It was, you know, we live in Maui so you get a lot of people with second homes and kind of snowboards, et cetera.

So it's all older people. And it was fascinating how we just, we just leaned into it. Like a couple of them, like one guy was paraplegic in a wheelchair.

So we would like help with stuff of like in his house and where the kids would come over and pick his, the vegetable garden cause he couldn't do it. So all this stuff, right? Making meals for people, helping people when they had friends visit and unlocking door and getting mail. And so what that did is it's crazy how it like people enjoyed us being around and it felt like we had the kids loved it. You know what I mean? And so that's a small one.

I would say that's easy in the small season. And I'll add to that because sometimes with little kids, you can just feel like I have little kids. We're not doing anything meaningful. That's what I'm trying to say.

Yeah. Dave and I did the same thing where Dave, our neighbors loved us, but honestly we were both outside with so many neighbors. That's why the other way to put it too is our commitment was like we had a funny commitment in our house. Our backyard is off limits.

We only hang out in the front yard for that exact reason. Yeah, these kids were over constantly. They would knock on the door.

This is when our kids were like three, five, eight. And they would like, can Mr. Wilson come out and play? They seriously would. And we saw that as, Oh, this is our ministry. Your neighbors definitely loved you. They did love him.

We played every sport. The neighborhood is your ministry. Yeah. And in your book, Take Back Your Family, which we're talking about, you're also, your mission of the Bethke family was take back your neighborhood, take back your city.

It's not a bad way, but in a beautiful way because God loves the family to look out. Exactly. And so there's like kind of two stages we saved. Like that's the young stage because I feel like you nailed it where I think a lot of people with young kids think like, I can't do anything meaningful.

Can't do anything. You know, it's like, no, it's actually the most meaningful thing. Hospitality, right? Like Jesus almost his entire ministry is hospitality.

Yeah. You can be hospitable. You can love your neighbors. You can serve them. You can honor them. You can be a person of peace in your neighborhood. And then I think when we, you know, when kids get older, you know, we say that's when you can start maybe sort of starting businesses together.

You can start serving together in the church. You can find out what your kids really are passionate about. Because when, when your kids are teenagers, by the way, one of the big things that I think a lot of families don't do, they should be is like, those kids should be being able to be speaking into the family. They should be having having a say in where the money goes. They should be having a say on where the, where the resources go, where the emotion, now that doesn't mean they're the authority on those things. But like, you know, back in the day, 13 year olds are adults, right? Their voices should be heard. Yes, let them kind of speak into the mission. I think that's one, one reason why a lot of kids actually leave the faith or, or just go in a really dark season around teenage years and after is because they, we didn't give them anything meaningful.

It was kind of just like, we'll keep you safe and secure and entertained rather than like, you know, 12, 13, 14 is like, man, how do you like, here's our money situation. And we have this much to give this year. What would you give it to? Who would you give it to? How would you give it? Okay, well, we can't do that, but yeah, you want to do?

Sure, go ahead. You know, and we actually have something like that with our kids where we have like a giving fund, we call it, where we put aside money every month. And then basically, like the kids just get to contribute to that. And so they'll, they'll be like, Hey, there was one time that kids were like, they brought some need of some girl who like with school supplies that they heard about at the playground. It's like, but that's perfect. There you go.

Let's go do that. You know, but I think you can do that in really large ways once your kids are older, because they're thriving like almost many adults, right? Like integrate them into projects, missions, businesses, whatever.

And it's really powerful. And as you said earlier, each of our kids brings a different part, different gifts, different insights. And I remember when our kids were teenagers or even younger, I was like, that is fascinating. Our family needs to hear that. You know, you're giving them like, Oh, I'm necessary. My thoughts are necessary.

My gifts are necessary. I think that's important for us as parents to recognize it and then to speak it. One of the questions would be, okay, so often the family has become inward.

Protect, take care of us, almost consumeristic. And it's almost reinforced by the culture. How do you break out of that? Cause you're doing that, but how do you create a mindset where the head coach of the team is saying, this is not what we're about. We're about, how do you break out of that? I mean, I think constantly trying to look outside, constantly ask the Lord to lead. I mean, one, one practical way is we have like team meetings every week.

You know what I mean? Now, obviously we have little kids, so the littlest ones are not really a part of it, but basically just it's at this point, we almost call it the coach's meeting because it's basically me and Alyssa. And then we'll integrate the kids, Kinsley as our oldest, mostly at the end. And just kind of like, it's constantly having a, if you have a weekly thing on the calendar of like, we are a team, here's our mission. Here's why we exist. Here's the list of things we're trying to decide this week. It's crazy how that keeps you oriented.

Another thing that I found fascinating were the, uh, Becky eight guiding principles, I guess. Yeah. We call them pillars. Yeah. Yeah. And so, yeah. And so that what we encourage families, cause again, we try to work backwards. I'm not making anyone feel overwhelmed. And so one thing I say is like, okay, think about your family, like a house, right?

Or more of like a Roman colonial house with pillars. What are the things that like hold your family up and what are the things that, you know, define your family? And we kind of make it like a stream of consciousness exercise. Like just start naming one words, right? What are the things that are important to you? What are the things that are valuable to you, you know, and start writing those down. Come up with a list of like 20 or 30, like just put in no wrong answers. Put whatever, like this kid likes, this kid likes, this kid likes, you know, this parent likes this person's wired, like whatever, et cetera. And then just go through the exercise of eliminating them based on like, how passionate are we really about that one?

How much does everyone care about that one? Stuff like that. What it does is then it, it gives you these words to hold onto that don't just become this cute Etsy thing on the, you know, on the wall, but actually become a filter. So like for Alyssa and me, whenever we're having a hard time with a really big decision of like, man, it's someone's either asking us to do something or a commitment or whatever, we actually like put it through the pillars. Like that almost becomes our third person in the marriage that helps us to like decide things.

I know it's a weird way to put it. And another too, by the way, a total bonus for like married people, what it does too is it takes the problem from outside of preference and puts it to like an agreed external, right? So sometimes in an argument you can always be like, well, you just want to do that because it's your personality or not.

I just want to, you know, and I don't want to do it because it's mine, whatever. But when a marriage has agreed on a set of principles that are going to guide the team, then it kind of what it does, it kind of takes the deciding thing outside of personality preference and puts it into like an external reality that both people are submitting to. And so, yeah, stuff like that was really helpful. Well, here's one of them that I'd love you to talk about. You say we center the table in everything.

Yeah. So I almost alluded that to that one with the neighbor one earlier of like, yeah, we just, we care about hospitality, even to the point now we've almost started to transition with some of our business things into more real estate and creating all this stuff because we just care so deeply for us about creating spaces of hospitality, welcoming people, serving pastors and people in ministry, all these different types of layers. But yeah, so there's that part of it of like, I would say that's the outward focus of us, of our family very much cares about like inviting people to our house and our table, you know, and like kind of creating spaces for that. But then internally as a family, we think the table's everything because I think like there's just statistics. Here's a crazy statistic, by the way.

I won't even be able to think of all the benefits because it's like 30 benefits, but it's like higher SAT scores, less likely of being thrown in prison, blah, blah, blah. All the, like just every successful thing basically happens if you only eat dinner together as a family, a certain amount. Now guess what, if you're above that threshold, then all these are true. What would you guys guess that number is? I know what it is. Yeah.

Cause I think I said it before, I think I said it before, but it's like three or four, right. Which is crazy. Right. So 20 something meals are possible. Like I love that statistic because most people guess high.

Yeah. Like 10, 15 impossible. Three, like that's like a breakfast, a Saturday dinner and like something to snack.

Very doable. And then I heard another person who talks about that research and says, if there was a pill, by the way, if there was a pill where you could get all those benefits, there'd be a line five blocks out the door. But yet all it is is just eat together three times. And most of us still don't do it or something. Right.

But it's very doable. It's crazy how it centers identity, family story, camaraderie, connection in a rhythmic way over, you know, years. And then also it's where I think a lot of biblical formation happens at the table. I think it's kind of like you have a captured audience.

Right. And so it's like, man, that's where we do. Anytime we talk about the Lord or open up the scriptures, it's always while we're eating, you know, I'm sure when they're older, we might do some more stuff differently, but whatever. But it's such a powerful mechanism. You see Jesus always inviting people to tables.

He's always sitting at tables when he's trying to explain the kingdom. He's using the metaphor of feasts and tables. It's something that is very powerful. Well, and one of my thoughts is a lot of families don't do that because their kids are so involved in so many other things, it pulls them away. And some of those things are good.

But talk about that a little bit. Like how do you decide as a mom and dad with your kids? I mean, you've got three kids. Are they each going to be in three sports and you can't? If they're older, it's tougher.

This one I get pretty passionate about. So we're not saying just go doomsday and have all the kids inside all the time. You can't do anything, whatever. No, we're not saying that. But what I challenge most parents with is how come you're willing to sacrifice in all the other domains of your life, but never for your family.

Right. So what I mean by that is like people almost feel guilty of saying like, no, we cannot go to that because tonight's family night. People don't do that or they feel really weird or guilty.

There's no other domain of life where you do that. Your boss can't just be like, hey, I need you to work tomorrow. Someone just invited me to something else. You know, no one does that.

You can't do that. You get fired. Same with school, right? You can't just not show up to school and be like, well, I got invited to a birthday party that day or her. Well, actually, no, I just signed up for sports.

Sorry. Like it's just no other domain of our life. It's just expected that like, no, you're in school, so you'll be here this time of day. You have this job, you will be here this time of day.

You're in a family, you will be here at these times of the day. Like, I don't know why we think that's weird. I don't know why we think we can't do that.

I think we're so pressured in our culture. I remember when one of our, I think it was our oldest and we were talking about getting, you know, are they going to do baseball? And this mom's like, your son hasn't signed up for baseball? Like you will never get on the right team. And if he doesn't get on the right team. And I had this panic feeling. I go, oh no, my son's going to be the loser and the worst. Well, I do remember for one of our sons getting more and more and it was a high level baseball team. And the coach told me, first of all, I said, hey, be my assistant coach. I'm like, OK, let me think about it.

What's it look like? He said 80 games this summer. I said 80 games in a summer. How do you play 80 games? Ten. Yeah.

Ten years old. And I remember saying, we're not doing it. He said, your son will never play at the next level. Do you realize the decision you're making?

I'm like, yeah, we'll see. He did play at the next level. But yeah, but that decision, I was the only parent that made that decision.

Everybody else said, yeah, yeah, yeah. And plus, I've been the coach many of those teams. You're like, you shouldn't have your kid here. He's never going to play at the next level.

A thousand games. No. Yeah, exactly. I do think, yes, sports are an absolute idol in the West. I think it's where most parents live vicariously through them. There's weird identity things. That's why you see more signs at sports parks, by the way, that say like that are instructing the parents how to talk than the kids. Don't get in a fight with the umpire or the rat. That's not talking to the kids. It's talking to the parents because we have weird idolatry identity issues with sports. So yes, of course, don't just be this little hover of your kids can't do anything, but be strategic.

Your family is important, so let that reflect in your values. So I grew up playing baseball my whole life competitively, so I actually resonate with everything you're saying all the way through college and just the intensity got insane. But I remember one kid, it was a family value of theirs that they were going to go to church every Sunday. So every single tournament we played, he only played Friday and Saturday and he never showed up on Sunday. And he did fine.

I think he even played all the way through college, too, as well. So it's just one of those things where just let your values be your values and either people will bend to it or you just move on. It's kind of like you just let it be. And it's a great family discussion. As a team, let's talk about our values as a team and what sports should look like so that we're hearing our kids and what they want.

But how does that fit along with who we are as the Bethke or the Wilson family? So one thing we talk about in the book and in family teams a lot is most teams have really high identity moments, these moments of ritual and moments of storytelling and these moments of bonding. And so one way we say that's really easy to capture that is create a family dinner night. And I don't just mean like where you eat together. I mean like capital F family, capital D dinner, kind of like create a weekly holiday a little bit. Right. And so for us, that's actually our Shabbat.

It goes 24 hours. You don't have to do that, but just create one night, one time in the week where you're showing by how you show up at the table that like we are important to each other. Everything gets a no that night.

It doesn't matter. Right. If dad gets invited, the kids get invited, whatever. And by the way, like that sounds really intense. Like, are we really that busy where we can't just like say no to one night? Yeah.

One night, not even the day. Just like, can you give me an hour and a half block? That shouldn't be tough. That shouldn't be tough for all of us to just, we can commit to this and this is what it's going to be and then make it special.

You know, by the way, make it something that the kids want to come to take us into your house and show us what it looks like. So for us, Friday night, it's basically we always invite Alyssa's parents over. So I would say that's fun to make it a party at some sense, unless you get overwhelmed by the hospitality side, then maybe don't.

But for us, yeah, exactly. Pizza, paper plates, whatever it is, your job is basically just make a night feel so fun and special that they want to be there. Right.

That's all it is. And then, you know, if you have grandparents, they definitely should be there. Put them on the seat of honor and just ask them a ton of questions. So like every Friday night, we basically have a dinner. We do light a candle. We do blessings, et cetera. But one of my favorite parts of that dinner is Alyssa's parents come over for that dinner because they live by us.

My parents live in Washington and we just ask them questions or the kids ask them questions. And it's so fun because, you know, kids are naturally curious. Right. So like it's not hard to lead that. It's not hard to like me and Alyssa stand back almost every night. We almost barely talk on those dinners because it quickly wants the kids quickly want to ask. And then and it's always just ridiculous fun stuff. But it's so fun of like, what was the first bike you ever had? Well, can you remember the first person you dated?

What was the first job? Like all these questions and the grandparents light up, by the way, because they get put on the seat of honor that our culture never does. Right. We tend to put grandparents more on the fringes. Right.

Which I don't I don't love. Yeah. So put them on the seat of honor, ask them questions. And so they light up. And then it's like a it almost starts creating a family mythology.

You start to realize how these tribal languages and cultures. Right. Sitting around a fire or even start to understand Deuteronomy a little bit better. Don't forget to tell your kids X, Y, Z and then your kids kids and make sure you do this monument. So any time your kids ask, you tell you, I mean, like it's just constant storytelling.

And so I think it's really, really important. And so it's easy. That's actually pretty easy.

Right. Have a dinner, make it as fun and easy as possible. So what would be fun for the kids would be easy for you and then just start practicing it because you're not going to get it right right away.

Invite people into it and tell stories. And it's crazy how sooner or later it becomes a really fun, enjoyable night. And then actually goes way deeper that on like gluing the family together.

Yeah. You know, if we did anything right, you know, we have three sons now grown, married grandkids. That's one thing we did. I love that. We call it Wilson family night nights. I love that. I don't think we missed.

We hardly ever miss it. 20 something years of like family Friday night. That's huge. And our kids are now doing it with their kids. Exactly.

Yeah. I can remember my favorite part of being a kid. And this isn't even a family of faith, but good people. My parents were amazing. But sitting around the table with grandparents, hearing my parents, my siblings and family members sharing stories.

Yes. I can't wait to get home. I didn't want to go to parties when I was a teenager because I knew they were having so much fun at home. And I didn't want to miss that. And by the way, I mean, what you said about creating this place of joy. Yeah. When I was a teenager, the Barron family was known in our city. That's where you want to hang out.

Yeah, exactly. There's great food, great stories. And people were seen, heard, loved. One of the reasons you want to hang out there because it wouldn't happen in your home. I think it's easy for us to remember and recognize how important and how powerful family is for the members of the family, how how important it is for our family to be strong and for each of us to be able to depend on one another. I think sometimes we forget what David and Wilson were just talking with Jefferson Bethke about.

And that is that other people are watching. Our family has a reputation in the community. We are as a family representing Jesus to our community. And I think a good question for us is, how are we doing with that?

What kind of a statement are we making? Jefferson Bethke's book Take Back Your Family deals with the importance of family structure, not just for our own spiritual and emotional health, but for our witness to the world. And we've got copies of his book available. You can go to our website, familylifetoday.com to order a copy or you can call 1-800-FL-TODAY. Again, the title of the book is Take Back Your Family by Jefferson Bethke.

Order your copy online at familylifetoday.com or call to order 1-800-358-6329. That's 1-800-F as in family, L as in life, and then the word today. I have never forgotten something that I heard Dr. Bill Bright say once. He was the president and founder of Campus Crusade for Christ, now known as CREW. Family life is a part of CREW.

And Dr. Bright said, if we can win the family, we can win the world. He recognized how significant marriage and family is in God's plan for the church, God's plan for the world, God's plan for culture and society. And at Family Life, we believe that to effectively develop godly marriages and families is one of the most significant things we can be doing. That's our mission here at Family Life. We believe we can change the world one home at a time by focusing on your marriage, your family, helping to strengthen it and equip you to live out your faith at home. And I know many of you resonate with that mission, not only for your own family, but for families in your community and families around the world.

I know that because many of you are partners with us. You have made financial contributions to help sustain this ministry, to help us continue to provide practical biblical help and hope for marriages and families. The next few weeks are critical for us at Family Life. What happens over the next couple of weeks in terms of response from listeners will determine just how much ministry we're able to do in 2022. The good news is we've had some friends of the ministry who have come forward and said that they want to motivate and encourage Family Life Today listeners to give and to give generously. So these friends have agreed that they will match every donation we receive between now and the end of the year, dollar for dollar, up to a total of $1.5 million.

Now, we're starting to make some progress toward that goal, but we still have a long way to go. And that's why we want to come to you today and say, would you make a generous year-end contribution knowing that your donation will be doubled when you call 1-800-FL-TODAY to donate? Or when you go online at FamilyLifeToday.com and make your donation? When you do, we want to say thank you by sending you a copy of Dane Ortlund's new devotional from the Book of Psalms. It's called In the Lord I Take Refuge, 150 devotions from the Psalms, a great way to start the new year in God's Word. We'll also send you a deck of playing cards.

Each card has a thought-provoking question for you so that you can have some good conversations while you're playing cards in the year ahead. Again, you can donate online at FamilyLifeToday.com or call 1-800-FL-TODAY to donate. And we want to say thanks in advance for your support. Now, we want to say thanks to our friends at VentureX co-working space in downtown Orlando. Today's program was recorded there. Tomorrow, we're going to hear about how important it is for us to be intentional about pointing our kids in the right direction, to be intentionally discipling them. Terrence Chapman joins us tomorrow. I hope you can join us as well. On behalf of our hosts, Dave and Ann Wilson, I'm Bob Lapine. We'll see you back next time for another edition of Family Life Today. Family Life Today is a production of Family Life, a crew ministry, helping you pursue the relationships that matter most.