Healthy relationships are grounded in mutual dignity, respect for each person as an image-bearer of God, and genuine appreciation for shared values and purpose. Building or restoring them includes:

Respecting human dignity and personal agency

Accepting responsibility for one’s choices

Embracing the pardon and hope offered through Christ’s atonement

Practicing forgiveness, reconciliation, and forbearance with discernment

Developing trust through consistent, purposeful action​

 

Guided by the authority of God’s Word and the truth of the gospel, we meet people where they are and encourage them to pursue change patiently and prudently alongside others who share that purpose. This reflects Rhythm Eight of The Pursuit of More: making reliance on Christ and the Holy Spirit a practiced rhythm for building and rebuilding healthy relationships.  This also involves distinguishing between ordinary human weakness, personality and cultural penchants, and destructive behavioral patterns. Together, we explore concerns such as substance misuse, medication misuse, compulsive behavior, and unhealthy pursuits of power, control, or certainty.  The goal is not shame, but honest reflection, accountability, and growth. 

 

The Dangers of Labeling 

 

In light of these foundations for healthy relationships, we disparage binary labeling such as addicts and non-addicts, alcoholics and non-alcoholics, narcissist and non-narcissist, and while we appreciate the behavioral and volitional clarity and insights, ultimately, on a practical relational level, we find psychiatric mood labels like bi-polar, borderline personality disorder, obsessive compulsive disorder, obedience defiance disorder, etc. to not be helpful for the person struggling or the person being directly impacted.  In too many cases, these labels absolve a parent, spouse, sibling, or even close friend from the role they have in the situation.  I.e. “If my husband is an alcoholic, that totally explains his destructive behavior and proves that my belittlement of him and efforts to control aren’t the driving reasons for his problem. He does what he does because he can’t help it.  He’s an alcoholic and is thus prone to minimize and deny his disease and to manipulate and blame everyone else, especially me, for his condition.” This means that using binary and psychiatric mood labels can likewise negate the important role we do play and the positive influence we can use to encourage the person towards change. 

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Finally, concerning developmental and neurological variations, properly called neurodivergence, (I.e. ADD, ADHD and sensory and social placement on the autism spectrum), because these conditions are not episodic mental illness (I.e. bipolar disorder), Pursuit of More Ministries does find significant value in both understanding the strengths and challenges of these variations and in employing a whole person approach for helping such persons wield the positive aspects of their variation--while minimizing and managing the liabilities—as they pursue wholeness and a quality of life.  

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Boundaries That Love and Support

 

We teach that healthy boundaries have a redemptive purpose: they help people love others while also honoring their own God-given dignity and wellbeing. Boundaries should not be used to control, punish, or diminish another person’s agency.

At the same time, safety matters. In a broken world, clear boundaries may be necessary in response to coercive control, manipulation, physical or emotional abuse, violent or reckless behavior, and religious or communal abuse. Wise boundaries make space for love, accountability, healing, and responsible protection from harm.

 

The Sanctity of Marriage and The Significance of The Home

 

Concerning marriage, we literally believe that when Jesus said, “what God has joined, let not man separate,” that He meant it.  Humanly speaking, marriage is the only covenantal relationship we can have, and our offspring (including adopted children) are the direct fruit.  This means that the marriage relationship and the parent-child relationship aren’t to be treated like other relationships.  These are the highest priority relationships God has entrusted to many of us.  

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Concerning the home, it’s one of the three institutions God has ordained, and is the most important of the three because the covenant of marriage represents Christ’s relationship with His church and the nuclear family is arguably the most effective means of government.  Thus, the institution of the local church works in tandem with the institution of the home to fulfill the Cultural Mandate and Great Commission, but these institutions are still separate and thus have their own hierarchy.  

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For the home, God has entrusted the teaching of His Word and discipleship of the children to fathers and mothers.  God holds the father accountable for ensuring it’s done, for how it’s done, and this entails the father’s stewardship of his wife’s strengths and assets including the level of his utilization and empowerment of her role as his wife and as the children’s mother.  

 

This means that local church membership does not afford its leaders with the authority and power to tell dad and mom how to parent their children nor with the authority and power to dissolve their marriage or oversee their home.  Pursuit of More Ministries is 100% opposed to the growing position of mainline protestant churches (namely, Baptist and non-denominational) that divorce is permissible for any number of reasons but that largely constitute wives--who don’t feel consistently loved by their husbands and treated as his number one priority--being freed from the entrapment of what is deemed a toxic or emotionally destructive relationship.  While we empathize with the problem and are acting, we don’t agree with making divorce a blanket solution.  Please see our doctrinal statement for fuller explanation.