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Missional Families - Let’s Hear it for the Tough Mama!

celtic-woman.JPGI’m proud to be celtic. The anglo-saxons didn’t conquer us unlike others on the British Isles! The Romans didn’t know what to do with us. Erwin McManus has written a book called the “Barbarian Way” in which writes about how we fought painted blue and white and naked. But that’s only part of the story - what made us so inconquerable was that when we fought our wives and children fought beside us. No one else did that. Most movies showed the women and children running and the men fighting when invaders would come. That’s not how the celts did it - their wives and children fought beside them. Do you have any idea how much harder that made the men fight? They would fight to the death knowing if they died their wife would and then their children. When a man started looking for a woman, he didn’t look for some petite little dainty, cute, skinny, pretty thang like a Paris Hilton - no, he wanted a honkin, tough, meat-on-the-bone, sword-weilding kind of mama - like a Queen Latifa! Something about seeing her painted blue and white running naked with a sword - I think I’d get out of her way! What about you?

Now for the spiritual application of this metaphor and mental image - missional families serve together. They are the building block of “spiritual communities” - so whatever you do, don’t separate ministry from the family - it should be done as family.

Comments

  • Robert Conner says:
    Jul 13, 2007 at 10:27 PM
    I love this story about Celts and families. Prehaps because my four children, 3 are adults, have been transformed into a missional family wanting to plant a church in a growing community. Their motivation is to change their world for the glory of God. This has surprised me for my two oldest had been with my wife and I on a church plant two decades ago and had experienced the burn out of both parents after four years. Throughly whipped we had retreated into investing into our children's spiritual lives. Never abandoning the hope of glorifying the King through our work, but totally disillusioned with the process that was taught me, I licked my wounds while serving congregations that cared nothing about power politics or denominational issues. This required working in jobs so varied that one person once asked me "Is there anything you haven't done, or anyplace you haven,t lived?" Through it all my faithful wife and now four children have stood with me when others wouldn't have. Now with wife, children, a son-in-law and two grandchildren we are assaulting the gates of hell again, but now with a focus and a process transformed by reality and a vision of the kingdom of God. I could not help but believe my stumbling on this website and your blog was another affirmation of how God has prepared all of the Conner Clan for the future. God Bless
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