Search Results for "Family "

Dr. Bernie Miller

What are the family rules? When Karis Kimmel Murray asked her two daughters, she was surprised and amused by their replies, even though they were way off track. Karis tells how granting forgiveness is the #1 rule of the Murray household, followed closely by "be brave and face your fears, especially when you do the hard thing."

How about letting your children have a say in what the rules are—and the resulting disciplinary action? It just might work!

Family meetings. It might be worth trying. Some of you have already benefitted from my article on family meetings. This testimony from a stepdad explains why they can be so much more than just a meeting. “We started family meetings by necessity,” he told me. “We kept running into walls with the kids so we decided to get together and talk about it. At first the meetings were all problem centered. But then we realized we could get proactive. Now, looking back it did more than solve problems. We figured out how to be a family.”

Corporations have business meetings all the time. Shouldn’t families do that? Generally, the purpose behind a business meeting is to generate teamwork and productivity. A family meeting is so much more than that. It’s about facilitating family harmony as well as making vacation plans and discussing the family calendar. You can also work through hurt feelings and support each other in tough times. And there’s a bonus for blended families: regular family meetings become a ritual that strengthens a sense of family identity.

It is said, God doesn't choose the equipped, He equips those he chooses. In this case, he chose a single woman, Ney Bailey. She felt the burden the failing marriages of her co-workers in ministry. Through her, influence, the ministry of FamilyLife was birthed. Ney Bailey, Dave and Sande Sunde, and Dennis and Barbara Rainey share what it was like in the beginning days of the ministry of FamilyLife.

Is your family communication filtered or unfiltered? In this digital age we have many communication filtering options. Say your mobile phone rings, but you let it go to voicemail. You listen to the message and reply with a text. That’s filtering. This has pros and cons. For blended families, filtering can help reduce conflict in strained relationships. But if new family members don’t stop filtering they’ll never develop a genuine relationship. The way to add depth is to actually talk and hang out in person. That throwback idea needs a comeback.

As kids grow older, encourage obedience by letting them help set the family rules--and consequences.