Monday, September 12, 2011

Family Mission Statement

Last year I went to Time Out for Women. One of the many things I took away from the experience was the desire to create a family mission statement for our family.

I wrote up a whole slew of ideas and found that the ones I gravitated to were from the scriptures. Man, there's good stuff in there!;)

I never set aside time to talk with Bret about it and for months my notebook of ideas was forgotten.

And then I saw that part of the Family Celebration this year would be about family mission statements.

Oh, snap! Where did I put that notebook???

When I finally found it I got lost in it for a while. (Wow! What good ideas I had. Why'd I forget this?)

We still haven't set things in stone (or even paper), but here's the general idea for our work in progress:

A short, quickly to the point, easy to memorize, inspiring scripture to start us off. Here's a list of those currently at the top of the list-
  • 1 Corinthians 14:26 Let all things be done unto edifying.
  • 1 Timothy 6:12 Fight the good fight of faith, lay hold of eternal life.
  • James 1:22 But be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only.
  • Romans 2:28 And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God.
Or, we could go with something a little longer, like Doctrine and Covenants 4:5 and/or 6 or 1 Cor. 13:13 or the thirteenth Article of Faith. Or not do a scripture and have something like "Family founded upon Jesus Christ" (sound familiar?:)).

Then (with the great hopes that I can create on paper the eye catching design in my brain...) using the letters in our family name we will list attributes we want to cultivate, one attribute per letter. I went through the Topical Guide and wrote down words that can be defined as family attributes. For example, with the letter "e" I wrote down- earnest, edify, educate, embrace, endure, engage, enjoy, enlighten, enthusiasm, equal, eternal, excel/excellence. It's going to be hard to choose which one to settle on!

When all is said and done we will have an inspiring family mission statement to motivate us and refer back to when life gets thrown in our faces.

I'm excited!

To read about other ways and why to's of creating family mission statements click that pretty button on my sidebar and join in celebrating the FAMILY with us:)

Update: "We got one!"

10 comments:

Jordan McCollum said...

Fun ideas! My family growing up didn't have a mission statement, but we did have a scripture (1 Nep 3:7), and a family motto (Franklins Follow the Lord—one year we went to Disney World with red shirts with FFTL on the back).

Our family got a scripture in probably a very similar way to how my family did: when Hayden gave a scripture as a Sunbeam. It's Philippians 4:13, and Rebecca (3) has it memorized, including the reference.

I like the idea of almost a "name poem", a backronym from your name, too.

Becky said...

What wonderful ideas! I'm so glad you found your notebook. (Now, where are all MY notebooks with great ideas?!)

JRoberts said...

Those are great ideas. I love the idea of basing it on the scriptures, there really are wonderful truths in there!

Thanks for linking and sharing with us today.

Tracy said...

Awesome idea! We are probably going to borrow it. Thanks!!

Jocelyn Christensen said...

I am excited to work on ours tonight!

Susan Anderson said...

Sounds like a good plan!

=)

Montserrat said...

You wrote about using the letters in your family name and it reminded me of this post by Shawni Pothier (daughter of Richard and Linda Eyre).

Family Mottos

Check out the print created with a letter of each word (not necessarily the first letter) in a different color to spell LOVE. Just another idea for ya!

Kristin said...

I love your idea about each letter being a different attribute. That's great!

Anne said...

I love the idea of a family scripture! We have several that we love and use often, but I have never narrowed it down to just one! We now have a new goal for the year!

~~Anne

Carrie said...

AWESOME IDEAS! Thank you for sharing them. Using your families name is a great one...I may just have to steal it-but I will totally give you all the credit. :)