Recently we are focusing on the gathering in the family to build the strong bond among the family members. Gathering means to assemble things and people together to prepare them for success. Gathering in the family is important for creation of the common family vision.

In the Bible there are multiple places describing gathering, the hen gather the chicken, as a symbol of unity in the family. This is a beautiful picture of the family with young children. If a family is not connected and united, when it is exposed to dangers, it is much more vulnerable to risks surrounding the family.

We have three types of family gathering.

1. Set aside a time for family to be quiet in front of God every week.
2. Create the meaningful events that the family work together towards the common family vision.
3. Create daily memorable routines that bond the family together through true communication.

Let me explain one by one.

1. Recently we started practicing setting aside an afternoon & evening each week as Sabbath, a time the whole family set aside all the work, study, business, worries and gather together in a special fellowship. We would sing worship songs together, share our satisfaction and frustration during the week and pray prayer of blessings to each other and thank God for all the blessings and guidance in our family vision to remind ourselves once again. We usually play board games as a whole family, watch a movie together and daddy who usually does the least cooking will try his best to cook a delicious meal. In a relaxed conversation we put aside all the heavy burdens aside during the week and talk to each other with encouraging words, kids will often show off their newly learnt tricks in front of us, and we usually will enjoy a meaningful movie together. That is our weekly family gathering time, which we make it a priority and dedicate the time for it. If you are interested you can refer to this article, the Liu family, who are our good friends, shared how they spend their time during Sabbath.
2. From time to time we design some special events for the family and intentionally get everyone involved, such as vacation trip, from the planning, which city/park/museum to visit, where to have meals, to research of the information beforehand, and even some budgeting, I ask my boys to do the research and give their proposals, and setup a special family challenge that the whole family will work together to achieve. Sometimes, we take the kids to some small commitment of community service projects and serve as a family. This helps the kids to form the idea of the family as a team and be responsible and take initiative to achieve the success of the team.
3. Daily family gathering – the prime time is the meal time and the half hour before the kids falls asleep. We will have every meal together in the family whenever possible and it can leads to a lot of fruitful conversations for us to know each other’s feeling, excitement, concern and know how to help. Bedtime is great time to pray together even when the kids initially did not want to when they started to form the habit, but they could not escape. Gradually this time became a true blessing to our family. When the weather is nice and schedule permits, we would walk together with the kids around our community, we explore new things, observing the changes in the neighborhood and a few times I led the family pray for the community while walking, I can’t imagine how great the impact on my young boys are, but I know it is planting a seed in their heart to move their eyes away from themselves and start to look beyond the ego and care for the people around them.

Finally some thoughts on the principle of gathering:

1. Gathering is about building a unity by putting everything together to become one body. We gather everybody together in the family, and come together as one body, we use our unique personality and skill to work on the same goal in the family.
2. It is important to have a family vision. We started our homeschooling because of a vision in our family and we want our kids to understand and share the same vision. What do we want to get out of the homeschooling experience? We want our family to be strongly connected and united together. We want to raise up the kids to be capable young men with vision so they know how to plan their life when they leave home and walk on the path of wisdom when they start their own journey. We want to provide them the learning and practicing environment for them to gain knowledge and life skills, develop the faith and form their vision with our help. What are the emphasis of our homeschooling? Prepare them for life under the family vision.
3. Relationship is the main goal. Teachable moment is always when the kids feel loved, trusted, and in a safe, respected relationship. When we create intentionally an environment of gathering, working on something together, maybe designing a board game, playing a board game and adjusting the rules to make it equal to every players, or working on some research together for the next trip, planning the trip, I would ask my kids to have the opportunity to contribute and really own some responsibility, which gives them a chance to explore themselves and come to me for discussion and help. When we work out something that works for all the family, it is a great experience for the kids to learn to work together with parents, and learn directly from us, and most of the time, it leads to a lot more interest to dig deeper in some of the subjects, and an opportunity for me to help the self-guided research for the boys.
4. Habit is powerful. At school there are repeated routines everyday, and both teachers and students get used to them and get school day organized. It is the same for the family and organize our life. We help our kids get used to the routines at home, and set aside those daily and weekly gathering/sharing time. We create a safe space and they know they can fully trust us so they would be honest and open when they do run into problems, or made bad choices. It is important to make sure they know they can seek help from us safely and it is a natural thing for the family to keep close and have the meaningful communications regularly.
5. God is at the center as the foundation. We can keep the whole family on the right path only by constantly coming to our Lord, gathering is complete only when our Lord is present with us. During the devotional time and gathering, we read scripture and from time to time review the family vision, open our hearts to God and seek His plan for our family. That set up the foundation for life .