A family’s assets

I wrote, about a week ago, about intangible wealth. Somehow the subject keeps coming up in my mind.

This past weekend I was in a meeting at our church where we were asked to pray for a group of members who are in Ethiopia helping out with some kind of mission effort.

Now, I’m all about mission outreach, and I am convinced Ethiopia is plenty deserving of aid. But I was suddenly struck by a the realization that our church made a commitment to reach out to (the words we used about 10 years ago included the concept of “adopting”–to ensure they would never be neglected) a certain people group.

When we first adopted this group, we sent four or five teams to their country–in order to walk the streets of their towns, villages and cities; to pray for them; to get to know a little bit more about them; and, generally, upon the teams’ return, to raise awareness of their physical and spiritual needs.

For a while, our church prayed for this people group on a fairly regular basis–maybe once every month or two.

But in the last several years, I doubt we have mentioned them more than twice a year!

. . . And we say we “adopted” them?

What kind of parents would we be if we were to ignore our adopted children in that way?

So our prayers for the team in Ethiopia–while our “adopted” people group is thousands and thousands of miles away–got me thinking again about the assets and liabilities of biological families:

As I noted in my post last week, part of our wealth–maybe much of it–resides in the relationships we have with members of the family.
Beyond that, part of our assets include our relationships outside the family.
Over the weekend, for example, I got thinking about our company. It has developed relationships with subcontractors in India. There are a lot of other companies of our size that have no knowledge of Indian subcontractors . . . or subcontractors in any other country but the U.S. All they know is the U.S. And so our relationships with these Indian subcontractors are a unique asset to our company. The relationships themselves provide value to our company–a value not shared by others.

Similarly in families. Various members of the family are in relationship with people who have skills and abilities and knowledge and experience that, when called upon, can provide tremendous benefits to the family. They are like money in the bank. Money, too, provides no real value if it is not called upon or used. But when deployed to wisely, it can create great value.

More assets:

Our commitments and obligations–adoptions, for example–are assets . . . or liabilities, as the case may be!
Experience and knowledge are unbelievably valuable assets. As I’ve often said in relation to some of the new brands and companies are family has created: when we first get the idea, they are like big chunks of clay–hard, almost impossible to manipulate. But, just as artists “work” raw clay, so, as we work on a new brand, it becomes easier and easier to work with it. Somehow, we “understand” it more than we did when we first began to think about it. The idea becomes familiar.
Just yesterday, our family held (I think it was) our third family meeting. I sensed everybody was more relaxed than they have been in previous meetings. More members participated without special invitation. Personally, I expect our next family meeting will see “the doors blown off” of what we have experienced heretofore.

******So some additional areas in which a family may possess experience and knowledge that are (or can be) true assets for the family as a whole and to family members as individuals:
- Running a family foundation.
- Running a family government.
- Running family meetings.
- Certain family traditions.
- How certain people operate–understanding the “weirdness” of certain people.