daddy4ms

Over the last few weeks, I have seen God move in some exciting ways. First of all, I attended two seminars (Kansas Strengthening Families Summit & AMFM ) within two weeks. Each had different takes on the area of marriage and family, but each also pointed in a similar direction. For the last few days, I have been sharing with different leaders a vision for strengthening marriages at Hesston MB. I value these conversations because they help tweak what God has put on my heart. I look forward to sharing this direction with the Body of Christ and community of Hesston very soon. It has been a joy to see how God is working and how He is using my gifts and passions to accomplish kingdom work. I also shared several months ago about the "God idea" to write family devotions for Hide N Seek this year. I was starting to worry because the task is so enormous. However, last Friday, I made some great progress and now believe I will finish these devotions in time. They have bee...

Be sure to read about Day 1 to better understand the context for this post. On Day 2 of Kansas Family Strengthening Summit, we picked 3 workshops to attend throughout the day. The first workshop I attended was led by Lief Noll of PREP on the topic of fatherhood. He shared about some great work being done in the state of Ohio in the area of fatherhood. We started by talking about assumptions we and others have about fathers. We then transitioned into what were the ideals of fatherhood. Most of the workshop was breaking into 4 groups to discuss specific areas related to fatherhood. The first group was to brainstorm the ideal fatherhood program. They came up with resources that are appealing, using the same curriculum, and adequate funding. Three areas guided their work: loving, coaching, mentoring. Under loving, they would provide activities and events. Coaching would focus on skills and responsibility. Mentoring would provide 24/7 support for the fathers. The second group disc...

I had the privilege of attending the Kansas Family Strengthening Summit on the campuses of Kansas Newman & Friends University on June 8-9. This was the first summit and from my standpoint was a great success. There were several key leaders from Topeka in attendance. We heard from Mike Pompeo , congressman from 4 th district. To be honest, his wife stole the show. He was followed by Rob Siedlecki , Kansas SRS Secretary who shared about elements of the Kansas Healthy Marriage Initiative. Some things included will be broad based survey, inventory of marriage resources available, public relations campaign, & training SRS staff. Bill Coffin had the unenviable task of sharing a history of marriage and family programs around the country. He did a great job summarizing a lot of history and keeping it interesting. He shared about 3 essential elements in a healthy marriage and they are commitment, communication, and conflict resolution. He guessed that only about 25% of marriag...