YouthWorks Family Trips: Creating Routines that Stick

 

At least once a week my wife, our two year old daughter and I make it a point to share a family meal together. This has developed into a beautiful routine. We gather our ingredients, we cook the meal together, and our daughter sets the table. She loves this last part – it’s her pride and joy. So much so that many times when we turn around she is already halfway done with the process. And then we sit and eat. We’ve gotten into the habit of inviting others into these family dinners in intentional ways, and it’s become a beautiful ritual to share.

 

 

When we first started doing these dinners, things felt forced at times. We sometimes had to make ourselves sit at the table and eat together. It’s also pretty inconvenient to cook with a two year old. To be honest, she’s not good at cooking, and her table setting is incredibly inefficient; however, as we continued this practice and began to invite others in, the pattern stuck.

 

 

As a young parent, I’m beginning to understand that these routines are what create the heart beat of our family. It’s those things that we do on a consistent basis, nearly on autopilot that truly define our values. And let me be clear that eating is certainly one of our values! We first had to take that leap into what felt a bit forced and a bit uncomfortable (and a bit inefficient). It took intentionality. Intentionality became pattern, pattern became routine and routine became value. Now we love our dinners together!

 

 

 

 

 

It was with this same sort of thought process that YouthWorks, in collaboration with Fuller Youth Institute’s Sticky Faith initiative, put together our “Family Trip” offering. Family Trips are mission trips that get the whole family involved. We’ve intentionally thought through a schedule, programmatic elements, service opportunities and  evening activities that fit for a diversity of families. On a family trip families have the opportunity to process through scripture together in an engaging and relevant way and parents get to serve others in tangible ways alongside your children. Our hope is, that by doing a family trip, families will take that intentional leap – that leap that is sometimes scary, often uncomfortable and usually a bit awkward and inefficient. But by taking that leap, perhaps families will be formed by scripture, and maybe serving others together as a family will take root as a value – a family value that will impact parents and children for the rest of their lives.

 

 

We hope you’ll consider joining us on a family trip this summer.

 

Check out our family trip offerings here.

 

 

Ben Capps blogs and helps develop training and programming materials for YouthWorks. Ben lives in South Minneapolis with his wife Bekah and daughter Margot and spends a lot of time with emerging adults. His lifelong goal is to rid the world of boring music, lack luster coffee and shirts that are not made of flannel.