How To Make A Family Mission Statement

Making a Family Mission Statement

Just like there are many families, there are many ways to make family mission statements. Almost as many ways as there are families. The process should feel natural to your family, so choose a way to make your mission statement which will most easily be part of family life. Do it in a family meeting, or around the dinner table. Maybe your family will go on a weekend retreat to a cabin or hotel and make a special event out of it. Or, maybe someone will take notes while the family has a conversation out on the back lawn. All of these ways are perfect.

When we made our family mission statement it happened in the car. We were driving to grandma's house on a Sunday afternoon and decided to have a car family meeting because we didn't have one beforehand. In this meeting to topic of a family mission statement came up and we all agreed it was a good idea.

I asked the family: “What words tell what kind of family we are and want to be?”

I wrote down what they said.

Then I asked: “What problems do we need to over come as a group?”

I wrote down the opposites to these problems. These were our new goals.

After assembling what we wanted to be and discussing the words for about 10 minutes we ended the meeting.

Later my husband took the words and scripted a document modeled after another document we had read before.

I made any edits I saw necessary and then we made a pretty copy for each child to have with a nice border around it so they could hang it in their room until it was memorized.

We immediately began memorizing it. Dad had the hardest time because he wasn't always here when we recited it. At first we said it three times in a row each morning. Now we only recite it one time after our morning family prayers.

Other ways to write a family mission statement:

(These are links from popular mission writing sites, but not necessarily endorsed by Teaching Self-Government)

http://www.christian-parent.com/writing-a-family-mission-statement/

http://singleparents.about.com/od/familyrelationships/qt/mission_state.htm

http://www.xenos.org/classes/newgen/classwork/familymission.htm

http://www.lifehack.org/articles/lifehack/how-to-write-a-personal-mission-statement-to-make-2008-your-best-year-ever.html

Here are a few other ideas:

Pull your favorite family books off the shelf and check out the virtues they teach and discuss if they apply to what your family wants. When you have a good list take a vote on terms as a group.

You can also write down every good virtue or moral you can think of on a slip of paper and then take turns pulling them out of a hat. Let the group decide if they go in the yes or no pile. Then script your statement from those words in the yes pile.

You could make a game to introduce your mission statement to young children and draw pictures to go with it so that they can remember the words. Your family could spend a whole month studying about what those words in the mission statement mean by reading books which focus on the same principles and doing activities and setting goals which encourage your mission statement's success. These are just a few ideas. I'm sure there are many. If you have another great idea. Let me know, and I would be happy to share it with others.