Defining a Christian Multigenerational Family

Lets start with a provisional definition and then well unpack the pieces: A Christian multigenerational family is a family incorporated on the foundation of biblicalcovenant marriages and covenantal obligations to children, extended over multiple generations, centered around a mission for the family received from God, with the responsibility of preserving, expanding, and most importantly, successfully transmitting that mission to every succeeding generation of the family. Cultural Transmission At the heart of what a multigenerational family means, is something I call cultural transmission. You could also call it cultural transfer. Norm Willis, pastor of Christ Church Kirkland, prefers the term generational transfer.1 The transmission, or transfer, refers to the process of passing a familys culture from one generation to the next. But why do I use the term culture? Because it is the best comprehensive word I can find that encapsulates all the things a family must transfer to their next generation. These are the things that multigenerational families pass onto to their descendants: mission, values, vision, knowledge, skills, family rhythms, assets, and experiences. At the head of this list is mission. All the other pieces can be potentially implied from a familys mission. So, while on the one hand it is more direct to say that a familys primary stewardship is to pass on its mission to the next generation, the concept of a family culture helps communicate that there is a large host of things that a family passes on that are necessary to support that mission. Why must multigenerational families be so intentional about passing on their mission to succeeding generations? Doesnt it just happen automatically? The answer is that history proves that without such intentionality, a familys culture typically dies after three generations. James Hughes, Jr., author of Family Wealth: Keeping It In The Family, writes about this phenomenon and has found that every culture throughout history has had a proverb summarizing this phenomenon.2 In America ours is, shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves in three generations. While the emphasis of these proverbs is on the dissipation of wealth, it applies equally to the entirety of a familys culture as well. Multigenerational families are about overcoming that entropic law embodied in the shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves proverb. They are about guarding the life of the mission entrusted to them from its certain death should they neglect their stewardship.

1 2

Norm Willis. The Ancient Path: A Return to the Kingdom Mandate of Generational Transfer (1999, 2006). James E. Hughes Jr. Family Wealth: Keeping It in the Family. p 3.

Another helpful perspective on the nature of the multigenerational family comes from R. J. Rushdoony when he identifies the biblical model of the family as a trustee or steward of a multigenerational line. He writes, the trustee family sees its possessions and its work as an inheritance from the past to be transmitted to the future. The family wealth is thus not for private use but for the familys on-going life. 3 Covenant Foundation People often mistakenly assume that blood ties are the foundational bond of families. The marriage relationship should remove this assumption right away. A covenant takes two parties who are not family and makes them closer than any naturally existing family blood ties. The reality of the covenantal relationship of the family also establishes the fact that adopted children are just as much children as biologically born children. In my book, The Christian Multigenerational Family, I summarize in detail Ray Suttons five points of the biblical covenant structure.4 Those parts are transcendence, hierarchy, ethics, sanctions, and succession. Applying the five parts of the covenant, we can say the biblical family should be characterized by the following: A covenant family confesses Jesus Christ as Lord (transcendence). God has sovereignly taken hold of the family for Himself and has put His Spirit into them such that their whole lives proclaim, as for me and my house, we will serve the LORD. A covenant family is one where the father is head of the household, not merely in name, but in substance (hierarchy). The father has the ultimate responsibility to be the familys teacher-discipler (prophet), worship-leader (priest) and dominiongovernor (king). The father represents the family before God and the world. (Yes, in the absence of a father, the mother necessarily fills this role. As in all exceptions to rules, the exception does not obliterate the rule. Even in this case, however, the essence remains there is always a representative.) A covenant family is one in which the entire Word of God is the standard for the familys life (ethics). Again, this is not merely lip service. The family characteristically studies the Scriptures and progressively conforms its life to the standard of the Word of God. A covenant family is founded on a covenant marriage between believers (ratification). For a spouse who converted after marriage, his or her profession and baptism provide the covenantal foundation for their children (1 Cor. 7:14). The
R. J. Rushdoony. The Institutes of Biblical Law: Volume II: Law and Society. p 43. Rushdoony here adapts the term trustee family from sociologist, Carle C. Zimmerman. Elsewhere I have made important qualifications to this term. 4 Sutton, Ray. That You May Prosper: Dominion by Covenant . pp 6-7.
3

family seeks to see their children baptized (whether as professing believers or infants). The family (representationally through the parents, at least) regularly participates in the Lords Supper communion with a local congregation. A covenant family disciples their children to steward the gospel so as to successfully transmit the Dominion-Commission task to the next generation (succession). Dominion is the Mission The mission of the covenantal-multigenerational family is, in a word, dominion (Genesis 1:26-28). The Great Commission of Matthew 28 is, in part, a New Covenant manifestation of the original Dominion Mandate. After the Fall, disorder begins in the human heart and that is where creating order out of chaos needs to begin. From there the Kingdom, like yeast, spreads to the whole of the world (the cultural mandate). While each family will have unique elements to their mission (rooted in Gods love of diversity), for Christian families, that mission is rooted in these four, inter-related, Scriptural fountainheads: 1) The Dominion Mandate, 2) The Abrahamic Covenant, 3) The Kingdom of God, and 4) The Great Commission. Four Components of Christian Multigenerational Families Another way of characterizing the multigenerational family is to see it consisting of these four components: A Culture A Discipleship Curriculum An emphasis on Reproduction, and Tools for generational transfer

The culture of a family was introduced above. At its heart is a mission and surrounding that mission are first values, and then things like knowledge, skills, traditions, assets, and tools. A discipleship curriculum can go by other names like training program or educational plan, but for Christian families I prefer to emphasize that the concept of discipleship be at the heart of a familys educational and training plans. The discipleship curriculum is the mechanism a family uses to train the current generation in the family mission. Reproduction is the nature of multigenerational families in three aspects. First, families seek to reproduce the culture and mission of the family in the current, living generation. Second, they reproduce biologically (or by adoption). Theres no family to pass a mission on to without new children! And finally, they reproduce generationally. They seek that their mission is entrusted and enlarged to generations they will never see (at least this side of glory). Tools include all those things that assist in the family mission. Raw assets are tools.

Governance documents for sibling and cousin generations are tools. Legal and financial agreements and programs are tools. Strategic family retreats are tools. A generational family on mission will seek to grow their tools, not for the tools sake, but for the missions sake. Well close with repeating our definition introduced at the beginning. It should be much more meaningful and memorable now that the Christian multigenerational family has been described: A Christian multigenerational family is a family incorporated on the foundation of biblical-covenant marriages and covenantal obligations to children, extended over multiple generations, centered around a mission for the family received from God, with the responsibility of preserving, expanding, and most importantly, successfully transmitting that mission to every succeeding generation of the family.