Flight Planning
With ideas out on the table, you’re now ready to have someone in the family refine and distill and pull them all together into some kind of expression that will reflect the collective feeling of the hearts and minds of those who have contributed.
In one sense, it is extremely important to get this expression down on paper. The very process of writing brings a crystallization of thought and distills learning and insights into words. It also imprints the brain and reinforces learning, and it makes the expression visible and available to everyone in the family.
Whatever you come up with at first will be a rough draft – possibly the first of many drafts. Family members will need to look at it, think about it, live with it, discuss it, make changes. They will need to work with it until everyone comes to agreement: “This is what this family is about. This is our mission. We believe it. We buy into it. We are ready to commit to live it.”
Keep in mind that a mission statement doesn’t have to be some big, formal document. It can even be a word or a phrase, or something creative and entirely different such as an image or symbol. Some families have written a family song that embodies what matters most to them. Others have captured a sense of vision through poetry and art. There are families that have structured their mission statement by building phrases around each letter of their last name. One family gets a powerful sense of vision from a four-foot stick. This stick goes straight for some distance and then suddenly corkscrews and gnarls at the end. This serves as a reminder to this family that, “when you pick up one end of the stick, you pick up the other.” In other words, the choices you make have consequences, so make your choices carefully.
Examples of Family Mission Statements
The mission of our family is to create a nurturing place of faith, order, truth, love, happiness, and relaxation, and to provide opportunity for each individual to become responsibly independent, and effectively interdependent, in order to serve worthy purposes in society.
Our family mission:
To love each other…
To help each other…
To believe in each other…
To wisely use our time, talents, and resources to bless others…
To worship together…
Forever.
Our family is happy and has fun together.
We all feel secure and feel a sense of belonging.
We support each other fully in our seen and unseen potential.
We show unconditional love in our family and inspiration for each other.
We are a family where we can continually grow in mental, physical,
social / emotional, and spiritual ways.
We discuss and discover all aspects of life.
We are a family that serves each other and the community.
We appreciate the grace of God.
We hope to leave a legacy of the strength and importance of family