There can be a lot of puzzles to solve when two families become one. Conflicts are bound to pop up. How do we deal with them? Ron L. Deal, author of The Smart Step-Family: Seven Steps to a Healthy Family joins Dr. Bill Maier to discuss how to deal with blended family situations. He also explains a number of steps that can be helpful for members of blended families to help deal with problems.
As well, there is a need in the church to begin ministering to blended families. While marriage and couples ministries abound in the current Christian climate, there is a lack of ministries directed specifically at blended families and their own struggles. Is it possible to fix this easily by extending the focus of current marriage ministries? Blended families that are part of the church have their own unique situations that they have to deal with, and the church is in a position to do wonderful things for them.
There are also questions about how to “cook” a blended family as well. Blending two families together can be a daunting task, considering there are two different routines and schedules and sets of relationships that have to be mixed together somehow. Deal prefers to think of the culinary process of a blended family less as a blender and more like a crock-pot. The analogy of the blender assumes that it will be a quick and easy process to merge the families into a unified whole, when that is almost never the case. Instead, it is a slow, drawn-out process, but when it’s given time to cook, the results are almost always better.
