Serving with Your Family

Today we talk with Mike Branton, a father and the Student Ministries Pastor at Sun Valley Church, about cultivating a culture of service in your family. Any loving parent would want their kids to develop strong character traits like selflessness, perseverance, and genuine compassion for others. What better way to grow these traits than through serving within a community?

In this installment, Mike and Grant share some practical wisdom from their experience as fathers and from years of serving in youth ministry. One of the primary ways to promote service in our kids is to model it ourselves consistently and be sure to explain why to your kids. Mike does this in many ways, but one way is by creating repeatable slogans within his family. For example, “Branton’s put others before us. Brantons show respect in words and actions. Brantons give generously. Brantons listen, trust, and obey. Brantons work hard in all we do. Brantons speak truth.”

Our encouragement to you is to develop some family mottos for your family. feel free to steal these, adapt them, or start from scratch based on your family values. What’s most important is not to lose sight of who you want your kids to become.

For more on that, here is a podcast from Andy and Sandra Stanley about Parenting with Vision.

And if you are interested in helping Mike and Grant at the Sun Valley Summer Camp, go here to learn more: Sun Valley Summer Camp