NOW AVAILABLE: Action Journal!

IT"S HERE! A Family on Mission Action Journal is here and ready to roll...

In honor of the release of A Family on Mission Action Journal I thought I'd share my family shared in a Live UP adventure this weekend.

A page from our Action Journal

I'm a pretty big fan of finding, making or recreating space for my family to shake off dusty old expectations of how a Christian family orders their life and one way my wife and I do this is to skip Sunday morning gatherings with the greater Church body and lead worship in our living room once in a while.

This weekend we did just that! Here's how it rolled and it did NOT roll smoothly, but it was absolutely worthwhile:

PART ONE: We woke up.
Pretty simple step (most of the time).

The kids played with Legos and I sipped on coffee. Around 10am, which is the time we typically connect with the Body, we rallied in the living room to an upbeat Newsboys song and got some energy moving about our minds and bodies.

To be honest it totally derailed at this point with my son. I won't say too much about his attitude because I don't want to embarrass him but let's just say it went sour and disrespect was high. Because worshipping God is a privilege and not a right I sent my boy to his room while my wife, daughter and I dove in.

Then it got better. My daughter started crying because of my sternness with her brother. Real nice.

After a few moments I brought my son downstairs, discussed his actions, struggled through some apologies on his part and a few hugs later his attitude was totally different and his mind was clear and ready to engage. And we all did just that.

PART TWO: Teaching & Discussion.
Seriously. My son is in first grade and my daughter is three. So as we read through James 3 and the wild nature of our speech and heart comparing it to horses and ships and forests we drew some pictures together about each image and how they compare to our tongue, our words and our hearts and actions.

How appropriate that we had an attitude meltdown earlier and we totally used it as an example of two things:

1. How our hearts and mouths can impact our time with God and with others both positively and negatively.
2. How redemption and reconciliation look when we're humbled and willing to seek forgiveness and then reshape our words and mindset with Jesus' direction.

'With the tongue we praise our Lord and Father...' James 3:9

PART THREE: Activities
After 15 minutes in the Word and discussion we dove into a craft depicting the tongue and it's work in our lives.

We followed this up with about 5 or 6 more upbeat worship songs from YouTube. Once in a while we sang together and paused to read the lyrics but honestly, we simply had fun jumping and dancing and singing together.

There's this idea that missing a large Church gathering on the weekend will demonstrate to our kids that we don't really take God seriously as Christians. And worse, that being a true disciple means showing up every weekend to earn salvation points or to prove to others that we really are believers. Like perfect Sunday attendance is a true sign of spiritual integrity in Christ.

Well, you can assume I don't agree with any of that and in fact spending this time as a family, leading as parents, praying together, creatively engaging the Word together and modeling a Christlikeness that truly goes beyond a Weekend Church Service in my experience carries a beautiful spiritual weight and fosters a spiritual fruit many of us miss out on in our homes.

CHALLENGE:

1. Check out the Family Action Journal.
2. Open the door a little more to being a Family on Mission!