Drilling Down into Family

So maybe I over-play the importance of family background. Maybe it's because I work with college students who are often on the front-end of processing their family dynamic--both the good and the bad.

But I think that for most of us the best things about us and the places of our deepest brokenness can be traced back to some degree to the influence of our family.

So as our guys group is doing some reflection on the hand of God in our lives to this point, we thought it would be important that we take the time to drill-down into several important categories.

And to start with, we'll drill down into our family backgrounds and how that's influenced our own family experiences to this point.

The goal here is not to wallow or blame or death by analysis. The goal is to look clear-eyed at all the factors that shaped us and to allow the Lord to sift through those and help us to see what was good and what was bad.

And ultimately, of course, our goal is to look forward to what God might want to do in our own lives, in our own families.

So I sat down about a week ago and brainstormed a list of reflection questions for us to consider. Many of them were questions that I was glad someone asked me along the way.

Not every question is for every season. I'm not naively supposing that we're all going to engage all of these questions equally, or even engage all of them at all. The point is to get us into the ballpark of a conversation and to lead us into prayerful discovery.

Eventually I think that all of us need to know and be able to answer each of these questions. But for now, we're just putting a lot of stuff out there and seeing what strikes the deeper chords. Here's our "drill down" reflection questions for the category of family:

1. Are there family spiritual blessings/inheritances that you might more actively claim for yourself or for your wife/kids?

2. Are there family curses that need to be broken? Is there generational sin that Christ is inviting you to participate with him in absorbing rather than passing along?

3. As men, our fathers play a huge role in influencing our understanding of husbanding, fathering, worshipping, working and of God as "Father." How would you specifically summarize your dad's influence in these areas? Are there particular stories or conversations or experiences or images of your dad that epitomize or gather up something that he taught you--for good or for bad?

4. All families are a mixed bag of blessing and sin. How would you say that your family of origin is a blessing and a curse to your current marriage/parenting? Have you forgiven where forgiveness is required?

5. Anything else in your history that shapes how you engage with your wife/children? For example, significant extended family influences, other families that you interacted strongly with, or issues from childhood like abuse of some sort?

6. Given your interests, gifts, personality, and experiences, what do you think are the strengths of your husbanding? What are your weaknesses in husbanding? Where have you seen the most growth to this point? These might be good questions to ask your wife!

7. Given your interests, gifts, experiences and personality, what do you think are the strengths of your fathering? What are your weaknesses? Where have you seen growth? Again, asking your wife might be helpful here!

8. In chartingyour marriage to this point, what have been the most formative experiences you've shared? How have those impacted you positively or negatively?

9. How would you gather up and describe the season of your family right now--ages/stages of children and this season of your marriage?

10. How is it with your soul right now in terms of husbanding as first earthly priority and fathering as second? Glad? Weary? Expectant? Prayerful? Other?

Paul and Jesus meets Scrapple and the Guys

So I'm reading in Romans and one thing that strikes me is how much Paul quotes the Old Testament. What he's arguing is that what God has done in Jesus is surprising, but it's not out of line with his intent from the beginning.

In other words, there's some dis-continuity in what's happened with Jesus--it's not exactly what was expected--but there's also a strong degree of continuity: what God was about in calling Abraham and through the hopes of Isaiah and the Psalms and others, he has accomplished supremely in Christ.

So Paul's understanding of the present situation and his vision for the future is rooted in the history of God and his working with his people.

As I'm thinking about what it means for our group of guys to have vision for our lives, our careers, our families and our souls for the next ten years, I've come to the conclusion that any vision needs to be rooted firmly in our own histories and be in step with how we have already met Jesus along the way.

We have to know and begin to perceive God's work in our stories to this point if we have any hope of leaning into a God-ordained vision for our futures.

So here's how we're going to proceed for the next couple of months. I'm posting this in the hopes that it might help some of you think about your own community/relational context and that it might spark application in your relationships.

Four Stages:

1. Each of us draws up our own segmented life-line. This is from Bobby Clinton's book "The Making of a Leader."

The line is segmented at a boundary marker: going to college, getting married, a move, a birth, a death, a job change--any significant shift in your life that marks the end of one season and the beginning of another.

In between each of those markers, you list the significant 'process items' that happened during that season: people, roles or jobs, communities you were a part of, Scriptures that were important, crisis that happened, etc. When it's done, this should be a rough-sketch of the major movements, players, moments, moods, communities and roles in your life.

Each of us will share our lifelines. The goal here is to start to see patterns: what kinds of opportunities seem to come your way? What passions or gifts seem to emerge? What kinds of sins seem to regularly trip you up? Where are the fingerprints of the Holy Spirit?

2. I've come up with a list of questions for 5 main categories that we've all agreed are the major ones: relationship with God, family, work, self, and "scrapple."

Scrapple is a meal that's made up of whatever's leftover in the fridge. So scrapple is the other stuff of life that doesn't fit those categories--a hobby, for instance, or something that you've always sort of thought about or dreamed about but don't ever think it could happen.

In all five of these categories, one of the last questions is: How is it with your soul right now, during this season of your life, in this area of your life?

3. From there, we'll start to talk about vision for the future. Given what God has done and where you are now, what is your picture of your preferred future in each of these categories?

4. Once we've got some vision-stories in place, some images and words and ideas, we'll start to talk about strategies and tactics. What concrete steps do we need to take to get to that place of vision in our family, in our work, in our relationship with God, etc?

My hope is that we might be done by Christmas. This process, completed thoughtfully and prayerfully, would be a pretty cool Christmas present for ourselves...and (I hope) for the women who are stuck with us!