Collegedale Camp Meeting 2023: Expanding His Kingdom

Georgia-Cumberland Conference

Family Ministries

Curtis Fox

Handling Conflict in Family Relationships

Okay, conflict is an important topic and I would shift gears a bit and talk about this.

We are talking about conflict in communication.

In fact, all of human communication and I think that it is necessary to be able to manage these, especially in the context of relationships.

But again, we will discover, if we care to, that The church is like a family.

The workplace environment is often like a family.

And some of the dynamics are the same with regard to handling conflict.

So I wanted to sort of move away from marriage, though I would be touching on that a bit.

And hopefully we can treat the subject well.

When we come back on tomorrow, God willing, we will talk about God's plan for happy marriages and families again, so we will talk about some of those kinds of issues.

And then in the afternoon, we will end talking a bit about mental health and handling those challenges as families in the context of the church.

We were talking this morning about marriage.

For those of you who were not there, I'm glad that you're here this time.

And we look forward to spending a fruitful time together.

I would make some assumptions in beginning, and they are these, for example, relationships are important to God.

God is a relational being and making us in his own image, I think, we are like unto him in that regard, if I may say.

And human beings are by nature relational.

We seem not to exist well without relationships.

Try growing up a child in isolation and you would soon discover that there is a failure to thrive.

Try feeling alone in the world and you would discover that it's not the best environment for ultimate health and well-being.

We are relational beings and I was just thinking for a while about what happens when somebody we know, let's say, becomes unresponsive to us.

And you see how immediately everything changes.

We begin to have a new experience because essentially we want to be able to relate to that person lying there and there's a lot of frustration in not being able to do that.

I suppose all because we are relational beings.

Relationships then, I would say, are important to God because he made us that way, because it is necessary for us.

He has taken it upon himself, I would say, to ensure that we have the experience and I am sure that he wants us to do better at the experience.

When we look at health and well-being, even mental health, as you might see, those who are cut off from family and from others have a more difficult time in life.

Their healing is much slower, in fact, and whether it is an internal wound or an external wound, and by that I mean, when I say internal, I mean something happening on the inside, emotional experiences, when people are cut off, they have a more difficult time healing.

But yeah, that is also true for physical wounds as well.

So I am making the point, and I would not belabor it, relationships are important to God, and He has a purpose for them.

Because God's interest is in our health and well-being, I wish above all things that all may prosper and be in health, I would suppose that he had a good purpose for making us that way.

And I would therefore infer that there might be some secrets lying around that will allow us to do better with regard to handling conflict and managing our communication processes for ultimate health and well-being.

I would go further to say that God has some simple truths for us.

I thought I would resist the urge to do all the technical things today at this point and simply go to a familiar source to find some of the secrets of communication.

Hopefully I would be able to speed it up so that we could ask questions, even the ones that should have come earlier today.

Would you agree with me if I said to you that we tend to forget or ignore a lot of the simple truths that are available to us.

We tend to look in all kinds of exotic places for solutions to problems that are readily available to us.

And I would suggest there are a lot of things that are readily available to us.

Let me talk a little bit about communication.

When we say communication, what do we mean?

Communication is maybe the conveying of meaningful information.

As human beings exist together, they seek to communicate with each other.

We are all trying to convey meaningful information, but there are lots of factors associated with that.

Again, I maybe wouldn't talk so much about that, but messages are coded and encoded.

A message is sent and a message received.

The meaning of communication, we say sometimes, is a message that is received.

But someone may give a message, and it is intended to be received a certain way, and an individual may receive it a certain way, and it is often true that someone may give a message and the message is not received the way it was intended.

We know that to be true, and that happens quite a whole lot, and there is potential for conflict, for misunderstanding, and sometimes even worse.

But we are perhaps all in the process of conveying meaningful information to another.

And if we think about the intimate relationships that we know, such as marriage, you can think of the multitude of times where A spouse, a wife, may want to communicate to a husband, or the husband to the wife, or the child to a parent, or the parent to a child or children.

And so there is always communication happening.

Somebody says, you cannot not communicate, because to try to not communicate is a very important communication.

If you sit in silence and you say to me, I will not communicate with you, you are very well communicating with me, something that is very important, notable of which is you are not wanting to engage me at this point, which may tell me something about how you feel in the moment, some way you feel about me, or a way that I am not responding appropriately to you, but something is happening in the experience altogether.

So we are always, I would say, in the business of communicating or conveying meaningful information.

The symbolic interactionist theory or theorists who studied, they like to study communication, say something like this.

Human beings communicate to 1 another through the use of symbols.

So we communicate through the use of symbols.

If I say I am feeling to ink you, can you tell me what comes to mind?

Well, almost nothing, because the word ink maybe doesn't have any connection for you.

But if I use a different word with which you are familiar that we have some understanding about, that it may change the experience altogether.

Because we are communicating to each other through the use of symbols.

But if we say language, we are talking about verbal language, and that is what I was doing a moment ago.

But I'm also communicating to you non-verbally as you are communicating to me.

Take for example this picture that you are seeing before you.

We could make a lot of inferences about what is going on with this set of people who are sitting there.

A lot of assumptions just because of where they are sitting, maybe because of how they are sitting, but we're also seeing some things about their faces, for example, are you seeing?

The face of the man, who we assume is father and the mother, we assume, and those little creatures that they are with, who I would think might be their children, right?

You see how much assumptions we can make here from the communication.

We could also make some inferences about their internal state, all right?

Look also about what we call proxemics, their use of space.

See how close they are sitting to each other?

We could also make some assumptions about that.

You see how much communication is happening without words, right?

They are sitting really close, like some tight-knit group of people, we call them family.

Their faces are speaking to, again, their internal state, and they are enjoying something that is going on, maybe on the device, maybe it's a picture, maybe it's a drawing, maybe it's something, but we are seeing a lot of stuff happening.

So we're talking about the affect, display, the faces.

We are talking about proxemics, how close they are.

God’s Plan for Happy Couples and Families

Thank you so much Sister Amy, we are here.

I hope you're excited to be here good to see you all and Those who are dropping by for the first time.

I started very early in fact to be honest, I was 21 when I started and never knew what the trajectory would be like, but it was not long into it I recognized that there was some kind of calling to this ministry, and I have been doing it for many, many years now, and more specifically, dealing with families, And it's a joy to be able to meet people around the world and talk about these matters.

But to be with you and now my own conference, it's a privilege and I do not take it lightly.

We talked today about God's plan for happy couples and families.

And then I would, this afternoon, muse on the important topic of mental health as families in the church context.

We would sort of look at some of these issues and see to find ways in which we can grapple with these issues as best as possible, for they are real, like the 1 we will be talking about.

So please consider with me this important topic.

When I read the scripture and I go with what I call the law of first mention, it's an idea.

It's an idea and sometimes used in theology to say that whatever is mentioned first is perhaps most important.

Whatever is mentioned first is perhaps most important.

So if you read the first pages of Scripture, you see the first mention of God, of creation, of Sabbath, right?

It's all there, the first mention of sin, the first mention of salvation.

So if we say the law first mentioned, perhaps the idea is whatever was mentioned first appears to be most important.

And I believe that the family is important to God.

I believe that the idea of family was born in the mind of God, the perfect God, the creator of heaven and earth, who created it out of nothing and had obviously, from the way we see creation, a master plan that was significant and entrancing.

So the family was created and we know in a perfect state.

There was no, to use Ellen White's word, no blight of decay.

In fact, I see perfection all around, unimaginable precision in the way God created mankind.

Imagine this, man in a beautiful garden with a beautiful woman on a beautiful day, and that's how it started, somewhere near sunset.

And I know that's troubling for some people.

And he said to them, go and be fruitful and multiply, you know, and so on.

So it must have been, according to 1 who wrote before, that Friday in Eden must have been a wonderful experience.

That's for another conversation, and I would love to have that too.

But I want to underline the idea that the family is important to God.

But why do you think God made the human family?

There are obviously many reasons, some of which I do not know, since I could only speak with the mind of a human being.

But in the mind of God, I am sure there are things that we would be discussing for a long, long, long, long time, perhaps not even to be measured in time, but in eternity.

But I would say that God made the human family as objects of his love.

God is a God of love and wanted to bestow love.

Have you ever met someone, well maybe you're sitting next to her or him right now, that you just wanted to love because there was so much love in you, you wanted to expend love on somebody.

And so was, I suppose, the experience of God.

He let us make man in our own image, creatures that we can have conversation with and love and care for.

God made the human family as objects of his love.

I would say also that God made the family for relationship with himself and for each other.

Remember God was himself and is a relational being and wanted to have conversation.

And Adam and Eve walked with God in the garden and had conversation with him.

Enoch did too, and God loved it so much that He said, I wouldn't allow you to go back.

You know the story that preachers might say.

Should we understand it fully, we begin to understand the beauty and the significance of family.

Well, so that the human family would reflect his character of holiness and love and grace.

This to me is important because this to me says that the family is not just about me.

Marriage is not just about you or your spouse.

It is a part of a grand thing that is beyond us.

That's why we talked even yesterday about the unfolding revelation being initiated into the higher ethics of life.

I was saying in a book that I encourage my students to read that the author, the first chapter is entitled Nobody's Ready for Marriage, but Marriage Makes You Ready for Marriage.

And I was saying that there is an ever unfolding experience when you are initiated into the experience of marriage, so that your marriage makes you ready for your marriage.

Your marriage today and the experiences you have, and maybe the experiences you had yesterday, have served to make you more ready for your marriage tomorrow.

A snake showed up and messed up God's plan.

You remember when this serpent in Genesis chapter 3 showed up nervously coiling on a tree and suggesting to Eve what she could have for dinner.

And she decided to touch it and eat it and to share it with her husband.

And the eyes of them both were open and they recognized that they were both outside of the glory of God and sought to shelter themselves with by their own efforts but failed at best to do it.

For even though they had sowed fig leaves and so on, they still were running from the presence of God, suggesting that they were still undone.

Human effort to sort of solve human problems, don't seem to work.

And when God did, he provided the necessary sacrifice and all the accoutrements necessary to begin to solve the human condition.

But we must recognize, 1, that the human condition was tainted by sin, the family was messed up by sin, would you agree?

Yeah, and God is seeking to reverse this in the ways in which he has provided.

So I can talk about the family ideals, and we've got to be careful in talking about that because sometimes for us, the ideal in family could become the enemy of the real.

But I just want to say that when you look at the statistics, the high rates of family violence, it feels as if the innocence of the human family was lost and a long time ago, actually very close to the beginning too.

A woman is more likely, we say, to die in or near her home than she is likely to die on some of the busy and dangerous streets of this country and many others.

That family violence is a very prevalent situation.

So a place designed to be a place of love can be a place of anything else and sometimes a lot of danger lurking on every side.

When we look at the high rates of divorce, we see again another clear indication of a disruption in family process outside of God's will.

When we look at the fact that many people are choosing not to get married.

Some people say, we talk about the post-marriage society and by that people are saying it is as if it is not the only option for many people and for many people it's not the option at all.

And in fact, some people are holding very negative views about marriage.

Somebody said, marriage is an institution, but who wants to live in an institution?

And that's the kind of parlance we get considering marriage.

Some people trace the significance of this too, but it may be an indication of a lessening of values associated with family, and there are lots of implications for that.

I don't want to talk about that because that's not the major focus for consideration today.

And then we could talk also about the difficulty that parents have in getting their children to cooperate with the training and the ideas and the messages that have been taught.

To talk with parents, Gather any number of parents in a room and listen to the conversation.

And especially if those kids are pubescent children or adolescent or early adult, people who are adulting, we say, they will tell you that that's a big struggle.

Managing Mental Challenges as Families in the Church

There are only so many hours in a day, and truthfully, we can be talking about some of these things for a long, long time.

So I'm glad that you're here, and we will discuss managing mental health challenges as families in the church context.

The long title was deliberate, I tell you why, because we gotta talk about managing.

The truth is, mental health problems are a real experience, and we'll talk about that.

But we've got to find ways to sort of deal with our reality, the reality that is the case for many people.

And these things are challenging to us but and to families and then families who make up the church, families that are members of the church and the church perhaps has a play a part, you know, in the support of people and can play a part.

The church sometimes is, I hate to say, part of the problem.

And we have seen that too, and we got to be mindful of that, but we got to, as members of the church, try to be that presence that would make a difference.

The truth is that all families experience challenges.

And I would perhaps identify, for example, some of them.

Some of us know what it is like to lose a loved 1.

Some people do it better than others, but can be the genesis of a lot of struggles in people's lives.

I spoke with a woman, for example, who told me she hadn't slept good sleep in 5 years because of the circumstances under which her father died.

She went home several times to visit her father when he was sick and he would bounce back.

This time, trying to finish a degree in the midst of her last exam, she thought, hey, my parents would be greatly proud for me to finish with my PhD degree in science and then come home to see him.

But this time her father didn't bounce back.

But she was not on good terms with her dad because she was a bit upset with him because he wasn't taking her advice, her medical advice, which she was learning, actually.

And because there was no closure, the death meant the world to her.

And she, therefore, couldn't forgive herself and had sleep terror for 5 years until she overcame and we did talk about it and we went through some exercises that allowed her to finally get a breakthrough on that.

So many members during the pandemic lost loved ones.

Couldn't visit this, couldn't do a funeral, and on and on and on.

Grief and loss can be a very real experience, can be a very challenging experience to our emotional health and well-being.

Sometimes with a downturn of the economy, Lots and lots of people would lose jobs.

Sometimes that's easier than being handed singularly a pink slip on Friday or Thursday saying, please don't come back.

The security officer would be there to escort you out.

That can be the genesis of struggles for people as those experiences or experiences like those could color their perspective on themselves and thereafter forever have a lifetime of poor adjustment to their career and occupation and on and on.

Uncertainty about the future, not knowing what would happen, maybe because of an unsuspecting diagnosis, an illness, maybe finishing school and not knowing what 1 would do or where 1 would be able to express one's vocation might be an easy experience for some people, but for others it can be, again, a very significant and profound issue.

They've gotten alopecia areata because they had to leave the East Coast and go to the West Coast for school.

Away from family members in a dry and thirsty land where there no water is.

They have wandered in the desert and solitary places in Southern California, and all of a sudden things that you would not imagine happen to them.

Separation, maybe through family disruption, you know, divorce and stuff like that.

Speak to some people, some who are aged and some who are not, who experience real isolation.

They don't have people to talk to, don't have family that visit them, and on and on.

And that can create, again, a lot of poor life adjustment for some people.

I remember working in a place and I was alone, and I do remember how it felt, especially on weekends when I did not have the usual people around me.

And I think I could commiserate, if you will, with people who experience loneliness and isolation, though I would not say that my adjustment was poor, but I do remember what it feels like to want to be around people when people did not necessarily want to be around or were not available to be around.

And we know that that too can be an experience that can create a lot of helplessness and learn helplessness.

Parent-child relations, We talked about that I think today that many parents when they gather together today talk about parent-child relational problems.

Those of you who have children that are teens know that that's a completely different experience and all the fantasies of parenting turn to dust and ashes sometimes as we have will conflicts with children who just seem to want to do their own thing.

And for them, children, and for parents, those things can be real, really problematic.

And then, of course, there is the big experience of illness.

And going to a doctor and sitting and having a doctor tell you things that are distressing.

You know, when the thief comes in but for to kill and steal and destroy and the doctor is sitting across from you and the prognosis doesn't look good, or the debilitating illness can take you to places that you never intended to, has the capacity to affect your livelihood, your family, and everything else.

But these everyday challenges and others are common to mankind and they are not always easy to deal with.

Series

Family Ministries

Handling Conflict in Family Relationships

Transcript

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Parent Conference

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