Mission Statements Not Just For Corporations
June 10th, 2006It has been at least a year since Krissy and I first decided that we wanted to draft a mission statement for ourselves and for our future family members. It’s amazing how quickly time passes when something difficult has no deadline. We worked on this for a long time. We must have written a total of ten pages worth of things that were good and that we wanted. We then condensed all of those ideas down to the principles upon which they rested. We found it difficult to achieve a balance between the specific and the general. I was thinking too much about rules at the beginning, making up a long list of dos and don’ts. I don’t know how we did it, but we eventually settled on this wording. What made it easier to call it finished was our realization that this is only a first draft. Version 1.0 is bound to have a few bugs and I’m confident that there will be a version 1.1 in the not too distant future.
We were reluctant to hang this up when we were finished. This document represents the ideal, and once it was on the wall it somehow gained a greater place of importance for us. We couldn’t do certain things anymore because we had agreed to the mission of the Family now. Scripture reading needed to come before television. That’s what the document on the wall said should happen. What we always knew we should do is now there in black and white reminding us. We still aren’t perfect and I don’t plan on getting there any time soon, but at least I have a better idea of how to get closer to that goal.
Mission statements aren’t for everyone and they are certainly going to be different from family to family based on individual strengths and weaknesses. If you are interested in creating one with your family there are several resources available. If you decide to do this or if you have done this already let me know how it went in the comments.
