Defining Your Mission

Shame on the minister last Sunday for preaching a sermon about extending your family's sense of corporate purpose, becoming missional in a larger way than just the idolization of the family unit. How dare he preach this during little league! (chuckle)

But he struck a chord with me, and on the drive home, I broached the subject with the family. We're not as missional as we've been in the past: singing in church choirs, serving on committees, doing youth group events, attending retreats, etc. The only retreating we've done is into our family shell, I admonished. We should get more missional. More outward focused.

Husband's response, "I'm just not feeling it."
Kids' response. "What? Hey, can we go to the batting cages this afternoon if it stops raining?"

Sigh.

But in time, I began to consider broadening my definition of being missional. Another significant point in our family's corporate life lately has been exploring this concept of our response to big-business as it relates to providing our food. We've decided we want to commit ourselves to supporting the part of the food industry that offers healthy meats and vegetables. The part that is still free, though small. The part that strives nobly to stay in business despite big business trying to put them out of business! Suddenly I realized, this could be our mission-call!

Now missional is defined (by Wikipedia anyway) as follows:
"...a local church is missional when it intentionally pursues God’s mission for His glory among all peoples by following His patterns and His ways of expanding His kingdom."

So I'm thinking if we are counted as Christ's friends when we give meat to the hungry, drink to the thirsty, etc. then we're sort of being missional with this thing . If we're told to be stewards of the earth, we're sort of being missional. (I know it's a stretch, but I'm consoling myself that this at least starts our family toward some purpose beyond its own bloating!)

The next step, however, is twofold. The first part involves consistency. I admonished on this point, too, as my husband and I drove home from the grocery store, plastic bags of quickly-purchased sale steaks in the back seat as we raced to do some impromptu barbecuing.

"We've got to get more consistent with this goal of only purchasing local, healthy-grown meat!" said I.

"If you looked up consistent in one dictionary, and then looked it up in another one. Do you think the definitions would be basically the same?" he responded.

I decided a matriarch can't afford a sense of humor. It is her Achilles' heel.

And of course there's step two: look for the good in the "failures" of life. For instance, I read all the time how crucial it is for a family to sit down at the table and eat dinner together. It is about the only insurance that children will grow up sane and well-adjusted. It's also the only insurance that your children will even remember they have families and come back as adults to occasionally visit.

Our family only does this on major holidays. Instead, we watch the news--or maybe Are You Smarter than a 5th Grader--every single night as we eat. Sometimes, I try to move us all to the table, but mostly some of us eat at the table and others on the couch nearby for a better view of the TV. One thing, though, I can say. Our children know our opinion (and we know theirs) on just about every current event. Our mouths stuffed with food, we comment and they question on everything from foreign affairs to the weather. Our way wouldn't make a cover-story headline in Redbook magazine, but I take comfort in this final analysis of our dinner hour habits.

As I pick muddy radishes from our backyard garden while my youngest walks the "balance beam" of timbers surrounding it, I remind myself small steps are still steps. And, big steps take planning. Much failure to accomplish goals spring from lack of patience through the small steps. And, maybe from forgetfulness.

I hope we remember that we're planning to split a grass-fed cow with the neighbors this summer.