Family Formation
Before We Broke It
Interview with Will Bourne
Choose an interview question (8)
The book asks what God intended for human beings in relationship before we consider the harm families do and inherit. It traces design, disorder, grace, and faithfulness in the family we actually have. Jesus remains the center, while marriage, children, and family are honored without becoming the gospel.
Why begin a ten-book family series with creation rather than a list of modern problems?
If I begin with what has gone wrong, I can make brokenness sound like the definition of family. Genesis begins with God’s good creation and with human beings bearing his image. That gives us a measure for love, responsibility, and dignity before we discuss any failure. It also means a reader whose household is complicated is not excluded from the good. We can ask what God called good and then ask what faithful living looks like from where we actually are.
Back to questions ↑What does the title Before We Broke It mean?
The title asks us to look at the gift before we examine the damage. It does not assume that every reader personally caused a family’s pain. Some are living with choices made by parents, spouses, or others. I want to name the difference between responsibility for harm and responsibility for the life we must now live. The book follows design, disorder, grace, and faithfulness so that a person can tell the truth without being trapped in shame.
Back to questions ↑Does this book argue that a person needs marriage and children to be whole?
No. Human dignity arrives before anyone becomes a spouse or parent. Marriage and children can be good gifts, and the duties within those relationships matter deeply. They are not the source of a person’s worth or the goal of the gospel. Jesus widens the meaning of family, and the church is called to make that belonging tangible for single, widowed, childless, estranged, and married people alike. We can honor a household without asking it to be God.
Back to questions ↑Why does Book One range across the whole Bible rather than stay in Genesis?
Genesis establishes the vision, but the rest of Scripture refuses to let us keep that vision as an untouched picture. We encounter households full of favoritism, fear, fidelity, loss, and surprising care. Christ enters a real family and gathers a wider one. If I stopped with the beginning, a reader might admire an ideal and have nowhere to go with the family they actually have. The wider biblical story lets us see both the good and the grace needed to live toward it.
Back to questions ↑What do the households of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob teach us?
God’s promise does not make their homes simple. Favoritism, fear, conflict, and competing loyalties move across generations. The point is neither to mock these families nor to imitate every act because a biblical figure did it. Scripture gives us enough detail to see what choices cost other people. I want readers to ask what pattern they inherited and where faithfulness requires them to stop passing it along.
Back to questions ↑Why does it matter that Jesus entered a real human family?
The incarnation does not occur at a safe distance from daily care. Mary and Joseph respond to uncertainty, protect a child, and raise him in a household with real pressures. I do not need to invent private conversations to see the significance of their conduct. God comes near to human dependence. That calls us to take the practical needs of present families seriously and gives hope to those whose own family story did not begin as expected.
Back to questions ↑What does it mean that grace does not require pretending?
It means we need not defend an official family story that erases someone’s memory or harm. Truth should be spoken with care, age-appropriate judgment, and respect for privacy. It should not be used to unload guilt onto a child or force a survivor into a family conversation. But privacy is different from a rule that the vulnerable must deny reality to belong. Grace makes truthful responsibility possible; it does not ask us to rename wrongdoing as peace.
Back to questions ↑What is one practical place to begin building faithfully?
Make the next promise small enough to keep and important enough to matter. A call at the agreed time, a truthful answer, a contribution made reliably, or a boundary respected can give new conduct a visible shape. The person receiving it may need a long time before trusting the pattern. That is their freedom. We can ask who needs protection, what duty is ours, and which habit must change, then continue the work after the first good week.
Back to questions ↑Explore the book
Before We Broke It is Book 1 of Family Formation. Continue through the series in reading order or begin with the questions closest to the life you are carrying.
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