Evaluation of the book:
“Fantastic Families” by Stinnett and Beam
The book “Fantastic Families” by Nick and Nancy Stinnett and Joe and Alice Beam was a helpful book and ok but I would not like to read this one again I found the book by Ken Wilson to be, in my opinion, much better.
The book has an introduction in which the authors say “what’s so important about family? That question can be answered with a biblical illustration. You may recall the Old Testament story of Esther, whom God positioned as queen so that she could save the people of Israel from utter and complete destruction. Esther’s husband, King Xerxes, had been manipulated by the evil Haman to sign a decree that would effectively end the messianic line and prevent Jesus’ coming centuries later.” They go on to say “At first glance, this story may seem irrelevant to the importance of caring for one’s family. But with reflection it’s easy to see that this story has a moral that applies to today’s fathers and mothers just as much as it applied to Esther so many centuries ago. Many forces are at work today, tearing families apart, destroying the basic unit of all civilization.” An interesting way to start a book of families.
Chapter one deals with committing to your family and its importance. The authors discuss characteristics of commitment and say “Commitment creates the warm, loving, accepting environment in which families grow.” I liked this idea as a first step in building a strong family. We should be committed to God and to our families and to building a strong loving home.
Chapter two discussed expressing appreciation and affection. Chapter three was on positive communication. The authors discuss the “value of communication” and say “When people are asked why communication is so important, they say things such as ‘Communication is vital to understanding each other’ or ‘Communication keeps you on the same pathway’ or ‘Communication makes you feel loved and vital to the other person.’ While these responses are a little vague, they highlight the importance of communication.”
Chapter four was a great chapter for me the title was “Spend time together”. I like the reminder that we need to spend time together to strengthen our bonds and to show our love for each other, the authors discuss the benefits of family time and say “Spending time together as a family reaps other benefits in addition to creating happy memories. It leads to good communication… It’s an antidote to isolation, loneliness, and alienation… It provides a family identity…”. A lot of important Things to consider.
Chapter five was on nurturing spiritual well-being. The authors say: “The importance of a spiritual center can’t be over stated when it comes to strong families. Reliance upon a power above and beyond themselves was the glue that held these families together and made them strong. Jesus, in the book of Matthew, talks about the importance of building our ‘house’ on the right foundation. ‘Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock.’ Ted and Nell felt the impact of the rains and storm and the winds that beat against their family. Yet because their house was built on firm, spiritual foundation, it weathered the storm and stood firm.” The go on to talk about the many blessings that come from building your family on firm foundation.
Chapter six discussed coping with stress and crises. They mention six tactics for coping with stress, “1 keep things in perspective, 2 let go and let God, 3 focus on something bigger than self, 4 humor yourself, 5 take one step at a time, and 6 refresh and restore. They go into much detail on each of these but I have only listed then to give an idea of what was discussed.
Chapter seven talked about becoming a fantastic family. There are also four appendixes that talk about “Assessing family’s strengths, Resources to help your family become fantastic, what you, your church, your business, and your community can do for families, and more about the family strengths research”.
The book was ok but nothing that I would reread. I am not sure I would recommend this book to anyone. There was a constant listing of things that seemed to be very strange, like the six steps to this or the five ways to fix that or the three tactics to overcome such and such. I don’t know if having these kinds of lists is really all that helpful I know it’s something that is being done a lot in our day and age but something about this approach bothers me.
Much of the book was stories from the lives of others and while this is helpful in illustrating points I am not one who enjoys reading stories about others I much more enjoy books that teach me and although his book is designed to teach people how to build strong families I thought the use of so many stories was too much and would have to leave this one on the bookshelf collecting dust. If I didn’t need to read this book for my course I would not have read it at all.
I want to say I applaud the efforts of the authors for wanting to help families to be stronger and godlier. I also think that there’s good information in this book but someone would have to do a lot of digging through the stories to get it.
