Patriarch/Matriarch Project

July 2022 my mom passed away. She was the matriarch of the family. She prayed for us, encouraged us and was our biggest cheerleader. Her passing got me thinking about the idea of patriarchy and matriarchy. Mom was the last of her generation in our family, so now, me being the oldest of four siblings, I’m the patriarch of this Baldwin Family.

There are 72 of us. WOW that’s a lot of people! How do you pray for, care for and cheer on 70 people? It seems like a HUGE task and a life’s calling (probably not a 40 hour a week one though).

I have done some reading about the subject and have talked to a number of people about the task of being a great patriarch/matriarch. Before we go much further I should say I’m not talking about the kind we usually hear about. I’m not talking about a male dominated autocratic patriarchy. I’m not talking about it in a religious sense where a man or woman calls the shots for the extended family. As I said I’ve done some reading about this idea. Based on that this would be my definition of patriarchy/matriarchy I would like us to develop:

A patriarch/matriarch is a man or woman who’s won the respect of God, as well as the love and respect of her/his own family and friends. They intuitively look to him/her as one of their primary examples of godliness and godly wisdom. (This definition — in part — comes from Gale Degraaf. He wrote a blog post about this from a male perspective. I enlarged it to include women as well.)

My goal is to post something each week we can think about. I’ll be engaging some people for an interview. And we’ll see where this takes us. I’m calling this a project because I don’t have all the answers (probably I don’t have half of them) so I want you to help all of those that end up following this blog grow into great patriarchs/matriarchs of our families.

Will you join me? Will you help all those that do join us? Let’s see what happens. Subscribe to this blog and let’s do this project together!