Who are you?

As I write this, I’m going to assume that you’re either a father or mother—or are planning to become one.

With that in mind, I believe it’s essential that you know who you are as an individual before you start on the path to developing a mission statement for your family. Better yet, it would be ideal that you know your personal purpose. These understandings will come in very handy as you collaborate with your partner and family members in developing a collective mission.

Without knowing who you are and where you’re going, it’s going to be difficult to craft a family mission statement that aligns. The risk you run by jumping right to a family mission instead of creating a personal one first is that you craft a purpose for your family which might “feel” good for all of you, but in some small (or large) way doesn’t align with your personal pursuit.

For example, my wife, Nicole, and I already knew the following about ourselves as we started on the path to document our family’s mission:

• My personal mission is to love radically, investing my whole inheritance as a shepherd and starter in Christ

• Nicole’s mission is to help set free the captive

• Jonathan is a son, shepherd, and starter

• Nicole is a loyal, impassioned lover and fighter

Simple enough, it may seem, but those identity-based truths took time to synthesize. We had to be assured that those were truly us before we came together in developing a unified mission.

Why are you doing this?

You might think that it simply feels good to go about this exercise, and that’s enough reason for you to start on it. But honestly, it’s important you peel back those layers and arrive at understanding why you really want to do this. Also, it’s important to know that you’re truly doing this together, not just on your own.

Nicole and I wanted to make sure that our priorities and values were clear to our then-young children. There are lots of ways to reinforce mission and values, but we had to be clear on them ourselves first. As a result of this work, we’ve been able to shift away from trying to dictate our children’s behavior and focus more on cultivating their identity.

For example, we’re able to use The Cottrell Declarations as a parenting tool when we guide and encourage our children in the way that they should go. If one of our kids has been unkind to one of their siblings, instead of simply saying, “Don’t do that,” or “Be good,” we can instead ask, “Who are you?”

Our children respond, “I’m _______ Cottrell.”

“And what values do the Cottrells represent?”

“We love well,” they acknowledge and remember.

This is now an identity conversation rather than a behavior conversation. That’s powerful.

There are lots of other reasons to craft a mission and set of values that embody you as a family. But this was one of the biggest ones for us personally.

What is your mission?

There’s a lot to consider as you collaboratively craft a mission statement. I won’t share all of the considerations here for the sake of brevity, but here are some general tips:

• Combine the unique aspects of what makes you each strong, and therefore, what makes you stronger together

  • For us, this meant uniting the “love” and “freedom” aspects of our personal missions into a combined purpose statement that the Cottrells are on a mission to “Live and love freely”

• Find a verse or quote that embodies and helps reinforce your mission statement, and put that on repeat in your home (and therefore, in your family’s hearts)

  • That was Galatians 5:1 in our household, which reads: “For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.”

• Make sure your mission is a statement that helps you make decisions together

  • This was never more true for my family than when we decided to trust Jesus, take the risk, and sell our house to live our summers abroad—or put another way, to live more freely and love those with whom we came in contact as we did so

• If you want to go further, take a stab at establishing some values that add color to what your mission should look like when lived out

  • For us, that included values which we prioritized as: Trust Jesus; Love well; Give thanks; Work hard, and; Take risks

• As more of mnemonic encouragement than anything, I also encourage you to keep your statements and values short and similar in format

  • In our case, a four-word mission statement was pretty easy to memorize for our kids, and five two-word value statements made it a little easier to recite, almost like a poem or lyric rather than each value simply being a single word (I could write at length on this, but you get the idea)

• If you want to go even one more step further (again, this is about what you want to do, not copying), you might consider putting together a visual model for your family’s focus, too

  • As you can see for Nicole and me, we even put together a Venn diagram that helped us prioritize what we wanted to instill within our children before they became adults, including: Godly character; Strong communication, and; Problem solving

  • The reason we felt this was even more important for us to create was that we homeschool our children, so this has helped us make educational decisions throughout the years

How will you live it out?

Phew. You got through all the hard upfront stuff. Now it’s about how you go about living this out.

Frankly, describing that work is not a single article*. It’s also not a formula. It’s something you and your family need to figure out as you go. Over our 16+ years as parents, we have incorporated (after many experiments, happy accidents, failures, and successes) a blend of traditions, rites of passage, mantras, incentives, personal tools, community, parenting moments, life hacks, counsel from others, and more to intentionally work at reinforcing what we have documented on this powerful one-page we call The Cottrell Declarations.

*I do plan for this to be an online course one day. Subscribe here to be notified when it launches.

As a final note, I might also add one final bit of wisdom and encouragement. Nicole and I know—and communicate to our children regularly—that they’re different people from us and they will grow up to form a different family than us. When they get there, they will have a different purpose, and they might reinforce some of these values in their own family, or they might choose to emphasize other values. Whatever the case is, wherever they may go, and whomever it is that they are shaped to become, my hope and prayer is that they have experienced parents who have loved them well by intentionally caring about and cultivating who they are more than getting distracted by and emphasizing what they do.

Nicole and I already love who they are, and we care about cultivating the unique, beautiful aspects of their identity that God has imprinted upon them so that they, too, can discover and live their lives on purpose.

Don’t let your family live on accident. Do the work now to discover a purpose that empowers you to move you ever-onward in your pursuits. It matters.