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Family On Mission: Live a Life of Kingdom Impact in Every Season · The Family Teams Podcast

• 0:00
  We are not in this to just focus on our little babies and make them into like the cutest, most aesthetic accessories to the life that we're wanting to design. No, we are surrendered to the King. We've dedicated our children to Him and it is our job to carry out the mission that we are on as believers.
• 0:24
  Hi, welcome to the Family Teams Podcast. Our goal here is to help your family become a multi-generational team on mission by providing you with biblically rooted concepts, tools, and rhythms. Your hosts are Jeremy Pryor and Jefferson Bethke, and we can't wait to chat about all things family.
• 0:41
  Hey guys, welcome back to the podcast. We are here creeping up to the month of October. So we're currently in September still, but we are about to start a new month in the Family Teams Accelerator. And this month is all about being a family team on mission. We're gonna talk about the idea of being on mission in October. If you guys wanna grab that one pager that is available to you for free, you can go to familyteams.com slash mission.
• 1:08
  and get kind of that one page. We have awesome community coaches. It'll be on the podcast next week. Mark and Michelle Tiderman, really good friends of ours who have done such a fantastic job of leading their family on mission in the city of Cincinnati. And so we're really excited for you guys to meet Mark and Michelle. But today, April and I are going to talk through the different ways our family has gone on mission. We want to encourage you guys to be a family that's all about blessing others. And so oftentimes you are in a season where you're like, I feel like
• 1:38
  Um, I don't, I can't even imagine being on a mission and we totally understand there are seasons for that. You're, you know, just had a baby, you're starting a business, whatever we've been in those seasons, but there are some times where you're like, Hey, life's kind of good. And I want to see us bear more fruit as a family.
• 1:53
  Or you might look around and look at each other, your kids and say, okay, we've got these great relationships we've been building together, but why? There's not enough meaning or purpose behind what our family is all about. And those are oftentimes indicators that you may be in a season of needing to push into mission as a family.
• 2:11
  You want to make sure that your family doesn't just exist for your family. You got to begin to lead your family out on mission. And the reality is if you do that, you will have a stronger, more loving family. You want to talk to people who have the most deep community ever. Talk to people who've been to war together. Those brotherhood, that is where the deepest bonds are really forged in the midst of mission.
• 2:35
  And so sometimes we can overdo mission, right? Where we kind of separate into our different, you know, components of the family and I'll go off and do things. And we just really experienced feeling very disintegrated or distant or disconnected from each other because of mission. But we believe there's a way to go on mission together.
• 2:52
  there's this, these sort of like these three ways of being on mission, right? There's, there's family and mission, which is like, these are different things. We have our family, we have our mission. And so these are kind of separated. And so we kind of go on mission separately, family and mission oftentimes means that mission can drive the family apart. Then there's family as mission, right? Which is, well, we don't really need to have a mission as a family. We just do family. We just love each other. We just kind of, uh, you know, escape and retreat as a family and try to build this amazing mission.
• 3:22
  family experience, but we don't really think about how to give that away to others. But then there's this third way of thinking about, which is family on mission. And this is what we're really advocating for you guys, that there is a time where you got to take your team onto the playing field and actually try to score some points, right? So we want to talk about that. There are three different iterations of the way that our family has tried to articulate the mission that God's given our family over the last...
• 3:50
  25 years as we've had kids and just tried to get more and more on mission. But yeah, April, anything you would say just before we get started on this about the tension that so many families feel when they think about this topic of a family and mission?
• 4:08
  Yeah, I think I can speak to the mother side of things. I think that times that I've struggled has been, when I am pregnant or maybe just have had a baby or I'm feeling the weight of running the household and then bringing up mission sounds like something that's happening on top of that or like in addition to, and if I start to feel the weight, it feels really heavy.
• 4:35
  And I think the times that that has happened, I've been, the Lord's been really gracious to remind me that this is the mission is kind of like the basket from which I functioned.
• 4:50
  from and so I'm train them with which you train your children so the mission doesn't have to be this massively huge we're gonna change the world we're gonna start orphanages in Africa or things that feel really big it can be small things like we want our children
• 5:12
  Because of our mission, we want our children to, you know, be kind or to share their toys or to try new food or to do these things. So it can give you the framework from which to teach them how to eat and what to eat and how to respond and why to obey and things like that, that it can all be couched within the greater mission of the family. It's not necessarily something in addition to or on top of like pushing you down. Yeah.
• 5:42
  Yeah, and part of the way we think about this is that families come preloaded with a mission, right? God was our first father, and he did have a family mission for us, and he gives it to us in Genesis 1 where he tells us, be fruitful, multiply, fill, subdue, and rule. And so that five-part mission is something we feel every single family is on. And then Jesus reiterates that great commission specifically.
• 6:03
  Uh, the first commission in the great commission, when he said, go make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the father, son, and Holy spirit, teach them to obey everything I've commanded you, which is really the same mission, right? He says it's to be fruitful, which is to make disciples to multiply, which is to make disciples who make disciples, uh, to fill, which is to go out into all of the nations, uh, to subdue, which is to make disciples of those nations and to rule, which is what happens to.
• 6:27
  When you have people that are being made disciples, King Jesus can then rule and reign over the lives of those who are choosing to follow him as his disciples. And so we are all on the same mission, whether you're a single person or a married person, but families need to be doing the work of mission together. And oftentimes, in addition to that preloaded mission, we also have special assignments that God gives our family.
• 6:49
  And so these often can correlate with spiritual gifts that are in our family. I mean, there are some examples of amazing families that we know that just have a musical gift. And everywhere they go, they just really need to hone that skill. And when they are out there serving the body, they help lead worship together.
• 7:08
  They help, um, you know, encourage the body through that. There are some families that have an amazing teaching gift. There are some families that have amazing, amazing serving gifts. Um, and they just show up and everything is amazing because they're just constantly, you know, using their hands to, to work hard. Um, there's just a lot of beautiful, diverse ways of, of articulating and experiencing a family mission.
• 7:30
  Also, God can sometimes give people a super specific heart for a people group, a country, a city overseas, a particular cause that they believe, wow, this is our cause. We think and pray and care a lot about God.
• 7:45
  what's happening with the persecuted church or what's happening, you know, with, with orphans or, you know, so there are lots and lots of ways that this could look. So we want to give you guys some quick examples of how this is kind of morphed over time for us. One of the things we like to do is try to write a mission statement. And oftentimes the way that this has been done is I will kind of take a step back and see how God seems to be giving us assignments in a season and then try to like, you know, somehow push that into a single statement.
• 8:11
  And I find the usefulness is that when you are playing a sport, you know what it means to score. And when you can focus the entire team on these very clear goals, let's score touchdowns, let's win games, let's win the Super Bowl. It causes the team to come together in a much more dramatic way. I think crafting a family mission statement is very similar to just simply saying, here, here's the scoreboard we're going to be watching because it seems like this is the game we're playing.
• 8:36
  So the first version of our mission was make disciples, grow the body and release the fivefold ministry. I think it was like about 20 years ago we started talking with this kind of language. So, yeah, April, do you remember what was going on in our family's life at that time?
• 8:51
  Yeah, I think we had like maybe three or four kids at the time. And so for me, that meant I was pregnant and then nursing and recovering and then pregnant and then nursing and recovering and pregnant. So there was a cycle, a natural kind of life cycle that was happening in our home. And I was learning how to run a household and I was learning how to be a good wife. And like there was all the beginnings of being a young family going on.
• 9:21
  But we had come out of ministry. We had a real ministry mindset. And so we knew we wanted to keep making disciples as well. And so I feel like those years were filled with this being a mission of ours and that
• 9:36
  figuring out how to do that as a small family so it didn't tear us apart, but also allowed you to use your gifting. And I know this is also the season when you, out of your own discipleship, wrote The Story Form Life. And this is when,
• 9:59
  that was the avenue that the Lord let us use for years and years to make disciples, or at least be like the first step in making disciples. And then we were learning about growing the body, and we were attempting different versions of house church and trying to build one another up and learning what that meant to gather together and to—
• 10:22
  to build up the body. What does that look like? How to live together, how to eat together, how to try to bear one another's faults, how to rejoice with those who rejoice, mourn with those who mourn, being patient with each other. We were trying to figure that out within our house church attempts. And then releasing the fivefold ministry, I think this is when we started to really try to understand what
• 10:47
  the fivefold gifts are, and maybe you can go over that, but, um, seeing that as something to like call out in people and then release them and give them a place for that to happen. So I would say these things came out of largely out of your gifting as the leader in our home. And, um, but my passions really aligned with, um,
• 11:08
  with those with your vision and so I think it was easy for us to kind of come alongside and then for me to figure out a lot of my gymnastics at the time was just figuring out how to do that with my energy level and where I was with different the different stages of adding members to your family team. Yeah. I
• 11:28
  Oftentimes this does, I think, sometimes take on the color of whoever in the family has a lot of that external energy and bandwidth. And so that was really me in this season. As we get into seasons where you have more energy, I think it changed. And then when our kids started to really come online with their individual callings, it also started to kind of morph. But yeah, this season was very much like I was being freed up uniquely by our family team.
• 11:58
  to really lead the charge in these three ways. So make disciples, yeah, I think primarily was through a story from life, grow the body. We were planting house churches and just really trying to figure out how to be relationally connected. Like a lot of the, like, how do we love one another well? Like, how do we create a community, a kingdom community?
• 12:17
  And then release the fivefold ministry. This is really a reference to Ephesians four, where Paul says there's five kinds of equippers, right? Apostles, prophets, pastors, teachers, and evangelists. And so one of the things we tried to do as a family is actually host those different kinds of gifted equippers in our own home.
• 12:34
  Or sometimes we'd rent some kind of facility somewhere or partner with the church and say, hey, let's get together and release this person who's got a more evangelistic gift or prophetic gift. Today, we actually continue to do that. Every fifth Sunday, which happens about four times a year where there's a fifth Sunday in a month, we try to host in our house one of these five. And so we had a prophetically gifted person this spring together.
• 12:59
  And then this summer we had an evangelist come and do an equipping at our house. So we continue to do, you know, these things. It's just a rhythmic part of our own household. But this is just about trying to take responsibility for, okay, what are those things that you've given us, Lord? Again, these examples may not at all be like applicable to a lot of you guys who are listening. I think the important thing is just to make sure that you are taking initiative as a family to be on mission. And sometimes that's going to be just serving at your church or serving, you
• 13:27
  in a ministry where someone else is leading. And sometimes you have to be aware if God's giving a unique assignment to your own family, and then maybe your house can be that outpost or, you know, the rhythms of your home can actually be utilized to see the kingdom expand. And these are ways that it worked for us. So, so we did this for a number of years and then I felt like there were so many new assignments that were, we were getting from the Lord that I wanted to kind of expand the family mission. There was also elements where I felt like we were getting a little bit more specific, um,
• 13:56
  And so the second version that we've used a lot is this one. This is a little bit longer. It says, establish a united multi-generational disciple making team that restores the biblical blueprint of family,
• 14:08
  builds up the church in Cincinnati and blesses Israel because of their current, our central role in the current chapter in God's story. So those are, so sort of that the who, which is this United multi-generation disciple making team. And then it has these three elements, which is the restoring the blueprint of family. We felt really called to the church of Cincinnati and to specific assignments. God was giving our family in the middle East and in Israel in particular. So,
• 14:34
  When you think about, obviously, all of these overlap with our current season as well in different ways, but especially when this was our primary description of what we were doing. Any thoughts about what this season you remember or stir up for what this meant? Yeah, I think this was a natural outpouring or...
• 14:53
  result of, um, the, the version one, um, because now the kids were getting older. I was, we were done having like birthing new children and, um, we had been working so hard on sibling relationships and building a team that was united, obviously not perfectly united. We definitely still had a lot to work through and a lot to, um, um,
• 15:18
  you know, figure out as far as the family goes. But we were wanting to figure those things out in the context of these missions. And God was giving us assignments. He just through, you know, putting people in our path and opportunities that he seemed to have a green light on for us, led us to spend a lot of time in the Middle East during these years. And then that just opened up a whole new...
• 15:47
  you know, world of things we need to train our kids for, how to do this. We started going when our youngest was two. And so there was a lot of safety training and language training and learning, you know, pounds to kilos.
• 16:03
  All of this and our kids were able to like build friendships and kind of knit their heart with the culture there. And there was a lot of great things happening there. But I think when we were there, the things we were learning, we were able to bring back and then edify ourselves.
• 16:24
  the city of Cincinnati through our small attempts at ministering to the body here, our local expression. And I think that that's just the way the Lord has worked with us, is giving us blueprints from Israel that He's allowed us to bring back to Cincinnati and therefore, like as a team, as a family,
• 16:47
  learning how to travel together and how to be on mission together and how to let dad go, you know, have this meeting while we figure out how to make a meal in a foreign country and create a home in a different place so that we can establish a landing pad for people that we're meeting and friends that we want to come visit and things like that. So there was a lot of growth and development in that time within that the pandemic.
• 17:16
  the context of our mission that the Lord had us on these assignments that he gave us that really allowed our kids to grow and for our family to be even more united. And our experiences, these shared experiences were very valuable to our connections with each other. And yeah, it was a really fruitful time in that regard.
• 17:41
  Yeah. Yeah. It's interesting. I look at this version of the, of the mission. It was very geographical in a sense. So you have, um, restore the biblical blueprint of family, which was really, we were really aiming at, um, you know, the country, like the, the way evangelicalism was thinking about family in the U S we started parting with the Beth keys during the season. Um, and so a lot of what came, became family teams was, was kind of like in seed form. And then it kind of grew and grew.
• 18:09
  Then the Church of Cincinnati, we were very like, okay, but we care a lot about this city. What's going on in the church of this city? And we've talked a lot about the city church. And any time there would be a ministry, Young Life was really erupting in powerful ways in Cincinnati. And so we got really involved in Young Life and doing discipleship up there. And then there was a mega church in the city that was just going nuts with evangelism. So we would spend years helping them make disciples and evangelism.
• 18:35
  spend time with their staff. And just like, there was, there's, there's all kinds of really cool things happening. And then, you know, twice a year, we would just all fly to Israel and spend a couple of months just seeking the kingdom there and building a bridge between Cincinnati and Israel. But that was kind of more of our worldwide, you know, like ministry. Like we really cared about what was going on in the middle East.
• 18:53
  in general and made some connections. So anyway, it was really fun to see how God just kept adding. It might sound like, oh my gosh, there's a lot going on, but one of the things you have to understand about the nature of mission, Jesus revealed this in sort of the talents parable, is that those who have, even more will be given,
• 19:13
  But to those who don't have, even what they have will be taken away from them. In other words, if you steward what I give you, the gift or the reward for that is to get more. And if you choose not to steward even a little bit, then even that little bit is going to be taken away from you. This is one of the reasons why I think it's really important to steward because God during this season really expanded.
• 19:31
  I feel like our ability to take on a lot because this was a lot, but it didn't feel like ridiculously heavy. Like I just kept giving us, you know, the resources to steward sort of a broader and broader mission. So, yeah, this was an awesome season. And these are still happening. Go ahead.
• 19:50
  Yeah, I want to also point out that, you know, we're not even mentioning our kids' education or your provision for the family within this mission. And so I think it's interesting that those are other things going on, kind of like –
• 20:06
  on this side, but very connected and very integrated somehow with it. And so I feel like the Lord can really direct your path to allow your life to be integrated with your provision for the family and the way you educate your children and the way you
• 20:26
  are serving the kingdom can all be, it is possible for it to all. Now it takes time. It takes one act of obedience after another to get to the place where you're like seeking out the Lord, discerning what he's saying, direct, letting him direct your path. It's a very different mindset than saying like, this is where I'm headed. This is the, what I've chosen. When I was 18, I chose this path and now I'm on it. And Lord, I hope you bless it. And it'd be cool if, you know,
• 20:53
  My family came along with me while I did this thing. So having the idea of like, we are surrendered to the king and we want his kingdom to come and our family. And what does that look like? What does that look like for work, for education, for mission? How can those even possibly be united and are like the same, like work together in an interwoven way? We are gaining experience during this time. Years and years of experience happened during this time.
• 21:21
  this vision, this version two, where we're just gaining in wisdom, I hope, and gaining an experience and understanding. But it can be such that things are all kind of like working together. Yeah. It doesn't have to be separated out.
• 21:43
  Yeah, I think that was really surprising to us. Like, okay, because we were starting all these businesses. Yeah, we had all this stuff going on with education. And then we had all these mission opportunities that we were constantly trying to steward. And we just kept being surprised about, you know, we'd fly to Israel to do Beyond Mission and I would get like five clients that were all living in Israel and it would help us in every way. Like I would take Jackson or Kelsey with me. I would go to Tel Aviv. I would meet with a client. We'd make money.
• 22:11
  we would have an opportunity to share the gospel or to make a connection that was strategic for one of the nonprofits we were serving in Jerusalem. And we just like, this kind of thing is constantly was going on, where all these things just overlapped, overlapped, overlapped. And we just were like, oh, this is, it's just like, there's a really cool quote that I like to, I put up every once in a while by, I think it was James Michener, who says, like, I don't really know when I'm working and when I'm playing and when I'm, you know, doing meaningful, like,
• 22:36
  I let somebody else try to sort out like what that is. I just live life, you know, that might sound like kind of a, you know, pipe dream, but it really was happening in this season. We were working very hard. It was a lot of a lot of things happening, but it was it was very rich and very integrated and lots of beautiful surprises. And every day felt a little different. But we were also little.
• 23:01
  leaning into a pretty intense rhythm. This is, we had to learn to live very rhythmically as well because just to make sure we covered all the basis, like make sure that none of our kids get neglected, five kids starting all these business. I mean, just, you have to be really thoughtful about, okay, how does all of this work together?
• 23:16
  And we just, yeah, there was, we definitely made mistakes in this time too. There were times where I just feel like, yeah, I was, it was hard to figure out where those like, well, let's lean more into integration or do our kids need more of this or that nutrient, you know, when it comes to education or, you know, connection or friendship or like, but man, yeah, these are.
• 23:37
  Rich, rich times. So like I said, all these, pretty much everything in this list from version one and version two, all of it continues to happen. We still have very deep connection to Israel and try to get over there every year. We still are very deeply a part of the church in Cincinnati. We're still on mission right now on this podcast, trying to restore the biblical blueprint of family. So there's a third version. One of the things I feel like that second version is probably the most accurate depiction of our family's mission, but it's not the most accurate.
• 24:06
  pithy or memorable way of talking about it. Yeah. It's just long. And, um, and so I've been playing around and kind of throwing it out to our families and seeing, to see what, but, but one of the things I've, I've thrown out there is like, there's a three word mission. And I'm like this, if I could just boil it out of three words, it to me feels really unique about our family. I would say, yeah.
• 24:29
  And then maybe a little bit longer way of saying that is we turn sons and daughters into fathers and mothers. But one of the, you know, it says both in the version one and version two that we make disciples. And I feel that even in those seasons where we're doing Storyform Lives, we were spending a lot of time investing. We had a lot of couples and families living with us at different seasons where we just pour into them. We didn't have a very good way of making disciples who made disciples. So we would pour into a lot of people, but they didn't know or they didn't necessarily feel equipped after we were done.
• 24:59
  to pour into someone else. Sometimes they did that, but that we didn't really equip them to do that. And so in this current season where we are really parenting, we're parenting our children to have children, right? That was something that we really felt called to do.
• 25:17
  And so now all of our kids are having our three married kids are all having kids, you know, early and often as we say. But we also want that to be true of the people we're discipling. And so April and I are both in this season where we are pretty aggressively taking on these like five, six month intensive disciple making seasons with usually three, three people, sometimes four. And then we will really be spending a lot of that six months, five to six months, and
• 25:45
  preparing them to also disciple others. And then we track that. And so we were trying to fulfill this mission of we multiply multipliers. In addition to that, April and I have a coaching program over at 1kh.org, 1000 Houses, where we take every three months a new cohort of people through our particular disciple-making blueprint. It's called Life on Life Discipleship.
• 26:08
  And the thing that's really unique about it is it's really focused on making disciple makers, right? So that's something we were very adamant about trying to understand because in those first 20 years of making disciples, um, we just didn't know how to do that well. And we could not find a tool that really worked for this. And there is hardly any disciple making movements in the entire Western world. They get to the fourth generation. They tend to Peter out sometimes most of the time in the second generation.
• 26:35
  But some of them have enough like, you know, sort of pass on able DNA that it gets to the maybe the third or fourth generation, but rarely past the fourth generation. And so we are just now in our disciple making seeing it get past the fourth generation. And so we just very much study the strategy for disciple making. So this is a big season we're in. It's really taken up a lot of bandwidth for our families today.
• 26:58
  mission and we're encouraging all of our kids and they're all getting involved in different ways. But yeah, April, how would you describe the, we multiply multipliers, turning sons and daughters into fathers and mothers. What's this season like for us right now?
• 27:10
  Yeah, I think it is, again, the natural outpouring of the work we've put in over the last 27 years of these different versions of our family vision. So I just wanna encourage people that it may seem, especially if you're in the years where your kids are young, it may seem slow and the mission might be like, wow, I got my two-year-old to wave at someone at the grocery store.
• 27:37
  Or we finally got all of our kids sitting down on their bottoms at the dinner table. Those things can feel so minuscule and small when you really want to just go out and save souls or win lives for the gospel or something else.
• 27:58
  And I just want to encourage you to like there, this is the long game and there is fruit in each one of the miniature missions that you are on as a family and that the long term, you know, so now we're in the season where our kids are multiplying. Our kids are having kids. So that means we are multipliers. Our sons, our literal sons and daughters have turned into fathers and mothers and father and mothers. And that's been a real gift to watch unfold.
• 28:28
  And really encouraging to see that the path that is being, I guess, forged or something like that. So I just want to say, keep on keeping on in whatever season you're in of the journey.
• 28:46
  your vision, your, your mission statement to keep it, um, to keep it real and practical and for it to be okay for it to, to be like a more narrow vision for mission for the season that your family's in. Um, but about our specific, um, season, I think, you know, it's interesting that we get to see
• 29:08
  I feel like we get to see more of discipling people outside of our family in this season than we were able to in the other seasons that we were in. And God's just given us some, especially me in particular, because my kids are, we only have one kid left in school right now. So there, I have some bandwidth to be able to disciple other women in a more intentional, organized fashion in, in such a way that I can help them.
• 29:35
  figure out a way for them to therefore also make disciples in the season of mothering young children. So that just someone needed to devote their time to thinking about how that could look and how that could work. And I feel like that's something that the Lord's really inspired me to do, to help these ladies kind of figure that out and have a passion for that. So that's the current that catches you up to the current.
• 30:05
  That's very good. Well, one of the things interesting, I think you guys can see kind of be modeled in this conversation is that I'm constantly like talking about how do we, how do we like, like get, get the family out and April's like, yeah, but we got them. We get the, what, who our family is right now needs to be cared for if we're ever. And so there's this, this dynamic or this natural tension. Jordan Peterson says something this week, which he sort of summed it up in a way that I've never heard anyone, uh,
• 30:33
  say it so concisely. He says, a father is radically on the side of who the child could become. And a mother is more radically on the side of who the child is. Isn't that cool? I know that that may not be true in every marriage, but I think that that is really basic to the design of the family team. When I meet with fathers, we're talking about...
• 31:00
  very like visionary conversations. And so we need to be leading our families onto mission. And our wives need to be freed up to say, well, like they do need to be able to say like, we need to pump the brakes a little bit here. Like we're leaving one of our kids behind. Like we need to make sure that who the child is, is being cared for. And I think it's really important to embrace this tension because if you,
• 31:25
  Give in to either side of this. If you, if you are father led, but you just run over your wife, then your kids are going to be neglected and you're going to be on mission, but in a way that's going to probably cause you to lose, you know, one or more, you're the children from the next generation.
• 31:41
  So you've got to be really thoughtful about what the mother is sensing there. But I have seen the opposite happen where the mom just has basically complete control. There's a brake pedal and she just pulls the brake really hard because she sees any attempt at mission as being a threatening to who the child is.
• 32:00
  But this then throttles who that child could be or who the family, like part of what Peterson is saying, this is a very individual thing, like who the child is. But I think we could say the same thing. A father is radically on the side of who the family team could become. A mother is more radically on the side of who the family team is today. And so that tension, you got to let that tension play out in the context of trying to figure out how to be a family on mission. Yes. Yes.
• 32:30
  Yeah, I totally agree with that. I think that is such a tension. And understanding that it's okay to have both at the same time, I think will really give your family a leg up in this journey. Because if you feel that as like a head-butting tension, then it's going to be...
• 32:50
  you versus me or us versus them, but if like a competition, but if you see it as an opposing, where one side is holding up one side of the roof tresses and then the other side is holding up the other side of the roof tresses, you need each other to create that support structure so that the family mission can move forward. So the mom does need to be training her children to be kind and waving to the neighbor.
• 33:14
  and helping the old lady who just dropped something on the ground. Those things need to be trained so that the dad's mission of traveling to the next state over or going to Mexico to build a house for a week or something like that, so that those things can come to fruition at some point. And so both are needed. And I encourage the wives to really
• 33:41
  kind of rise to the challenge. Like we are not in this just to have to, just to focus on our little babies and make them into like the cutest, most aesthetic, you know, uh,
• 33:55
  accessories to the life that we're wanting to design. No, we are surrendered to the King. We've dedicated our children to Him. And it is our job to carry out the mission that we are on as believers and that our husbands are leading us in. And so I just encourage you to really step into that, figuring out how to help carry out your husband's vision. Yeah.
• 34:24
  Well said. Yeah, we're blessed to be a blessing. That was the original family blessing given to the family of Abraham was, I will bless you so that you can be a blessing. And there is a danger in taking the first half of the blessing and not...
• 34:39
  properly thinking through and intentionally living out the second half of being a blessing. So yeah, that's something we really want to encourage you guys to consider. Again, if you want to like dive into this with us the entire month of October, we're going to talk about this. So jump into the Family Teams Accelerator and you can get more information about that over at familyteams.com. Again, next week, Mark and Michelle Tiderman are going to be on here. I absolutely am blown away by how God is using their family.
• 35:06
  um, to be on mission and man, is it integrated? Is it interesting? Uh, people are coming to the Lord is like been so, so amazing. I just, I've really never seen anything like it. So please tune in next week to the podcast and Mark and Michelle are going to be on, uh, the, uh, the accelerator. There are community coaches. So the way the accelerator works is,
• 35:24
  is week one, we give you guys a playbook. And this was actually written by Mark and Michelle. So they're going to train you guys about how to discern your family's mission. Then during the second week, Mark and Michelle are going to have a Zoom call with everyone in the accelerator who wants to jump in. And so they'll talk to you guys so they can answer your questions. So if you listen to the podcast next week, you're like, oh my gosh, I want not to...
• 35:44
  meet Mark and Michelle. I got a lot of questions. Then you can get those questions answered. In the third week, April, I'm going to walk through a whole tutorial, kind of step-by-step process for how we think about family mission. And then the fourth week, there's going to be a town hall where April and I, and probably a few of our kids are going to be just doing a zoom call with everyone in the accelerator to answer any questions you guys have about family, family mission, but also anything else we do those
• 36:06
  zoom calls at the end of every month, uh, for the accelerator. So please jump in there. If you're interested at family teams.com or go to family teams.com slash mission to get this, uh, this month's a one pager on being a family team on mission. So April, thank you so much for jumping on here today. You bet.
• 36:22
  Thank you for listening to the family teams podcast. If you're enjoying this content or have learned something new, please make sure to leave a rating and review and share with a friend to stay up to date with our events, new content and products. You can follow us on Facebook and Instagram at family teams.