Confession Before A Christian Meal
When our church gathers, we always share a meal together. Sharing a meal follows the pattern of the early church and helps us cultivate hospitality and relationships; both of which are sorely lacking in our American culture. Before we eat, we share a confession to remind ourselves of the special significance of eating together.[1] Here are some of our past confessions:
“Let us say what we believe…
#1: Being the apprentices of someone who is sinless and who died for the sins of a sinful world, never promised to be easy or to fit nicely into the life we carved out for ourselves. Jesus says, “If you lose your life you will find it.” He doesn’t say, “Find a place to fit Me in.” But the reason Jesus so wants to explode our lives and the way of living is not because He is some monster that wants to ruin the good thing we have going. No! Jesus wants us to walk in the way of abundant, full flourishing, and eternal life. Jesus, as the way, the truth, and the life, knows how we ought to live, and wants us to walk that straight and narrow, beautifully righteous, road.
One of the things Jesus shows He values is eating with others, eating with friends and soon-to-be friends. We take time to eat and talk because Jesus did. We take time to love because Jesus did. So, as we eat and talk and love today, let’s seek to take time this week to do the same. As followers of Jesus, let’s follow Jesus.
#2: Messiah Jesus has called us together to be a people of purity in a land littered with porn, He has called us to be light in a world of darkness, salt in a world of decay, a harbor of hope in a world of hopelessness. He has called us to be His people of radical love in a world of hate. So, as we gather, may God gift us and grow us to that end. May God build us up as we are gathered and use us to bless this broken world as we scatter.
#3: Jesus’ Kingdom is made up of people from Sierra and Senegal, Armenia and America, China and Chad, Portugal and Pakistan, Mexico and Malaysia, and many many more. The reality is, in Christ, we are all one. Division is dead. We are united. So, we are to live together in purposeful unity. It will not be easy, but Jesus’ blood was spilled to welcome us into union with Him and each other. We should not disregard Jesus’ great sacrifice for us, instead, we must “make every effort to keep the unity” (Eph. 1:3).
#4: As we eat even a meager meal together it is significant. We testify to the truth of our unity in Jesus. We remember the relationship with God and each other that Jesus has welcomed us into at great cost to Himself. We remember the various people that Jesus ate with while He walked the earth—prostitutes, Pharisees, and frauds. He welcomed them, He welcomes us, and we are to welcome others. We also remember that soon we will eat with Jesus and with people from every tribe, language, nation, and tongue.
#5: We eat remembering the fellowship and love of the Trinity and we share together in that fellowship. We eat as an act of rebellion against the ways of the world. We eat as a tangible reminder of all we share. So, while we eat, let us pursue what makes for peace and for mutual upbuilding (Rom. 14:19).
#6: God gives the gift of rain and crop, He gives the gift of life, and breathe, and everything. Often we as humans fight over everything. But in a meal we share and partake together. We give grace and we receive grace. A meal is a teacher and a uniter. God cares about meals. As we eat, we remember and we are thankful that we are not in the final analysis independent, we are dependent, dependent on God and upon one another.
#7: Jesus’ posture on the cross is His posture towards us; His arms are open wide. Jesus says to everyone who is thirsty, “Come. Quench your thirst.” To everyone who is sick, Jesus says, “Come. Be healed.” To everyone who is lonely, Jesus says, “Come. Be loved.” Jesus welcomes us, so we welcome one another, and we welcome others. And as we eat now, we remember and celebrate the fellowship Jesus welcomes us into.
#8: When the church comes together, it’s a political rally. We testify and celebrate the reality that Jesus is King. Jesus reigns in goodness, justice, and power. And though we may not see it with physical eyes, we are a powerful group of people, because we are the LORD’s people, we are the church of God (Gal. 1:13; 1 Cor. 10:32, 15:9). We all together are in Christ. Our identity is new in Him; we are not the old people we used to be (2 Cor. 5:17), we are people who radically love, who radically give. We are in Jesus’ Kingdom and under His powerful and eternal reign. We can’t be hurt by the second death because we are more than conquerors and will celebrate at the marriage supper of the Lamb. So, even as we eat now, we testify to these realities. We remember and we rejoice.
#9: It is no light or flippant thing to gather with God’s saints. We celebrate and rejoice that we get to share this meal and time together. As Hebrew 10:24 says, we want to consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, we do not want to neglect meeting together, but instead intentionally encourage one another. So now, Father, may you build us up, and bless us so we can bless the broken world that needs to know the love of your Son, Jesus.
#10: We together give thanks to the LORD for He is good, for His steadfast love endures forever (Ps. 136:1). We give thanks because the LORD is the giver of every good gift (James 1:17), the giver of life, breath, and everything (Acts 17:25). Our Lord gives food and friends to eat with. Therefore, as we come to eat together, we come with thankful hearts. Together we acknowledge God’s abundant goodness. As we eat, may we remember and teach ourselves and one another, that God is a God of extravagance and abundance; God has more grace, more love, and more pleasure in store, so may we likewise be lavish in our love for others.
[1] During the singing portion of our gathering, we sometimes confess one of the historic confessions (the Nicene Creed or Apostle’s Creed). I’ve thought about us systematically working through a confession but we haven’t done that yet.
Photo by Jaco Pretorius
A Christian Philosophy of Parenting?
What is our aim as Parents?
We want our kids to thrive and flourish. Of course, God’s revealed will needs to measure this, not us or the surrounding culture. Ultimately our desire is for our kids to love God with all they are—heart, soul, mind, and strength—and love others as they love themselves.
Sometimes it seems, however, that ignorance of culture is the aim, ignorance, and perpetual innocence. It seems some parents think innocence and ignorance are the parental aim. As Paul David Tripp has pointed out, many Christian parents try their best to keep the surrounding culture out of their homes. “In so doing, they lose a wonderful, focused opportunity to teach their children how to use a biblical view of life to understand and critique their culture.”[2]
I propose ignorance, innocence, and over-protection are wrong and foolhardy goals. Parents, instead, should help their kids towards virtue, holiness, and love of Jesus.
Virtue, not Ignorance
I recently read Karen Swallow Prior’s book, On Reading Well. The whole book is good but the piece that stuck with me was what she says about innocence and virtue. The Bible teaches that since the introduction of sin and evil into the world, the world contains both good and evil. “Virtue consists of choosing good over evil.” There is a difference between “the innocent, who know no evil, and the virtuous, who know what evil is and elect to do good.”[3] When first reading this, for whatever reason, I connected this concept to parenting.
In parenting, we are aiming for virtue, not innocence. That is, we want our children to choose the good, not be perpetually ignorant of evil. The reality is there will come a time when our kids will and should learn about sex, drugs, pornography, etc. There will come a day when they will not have the innocence that they did when they were young, that is inevitable. What we should desire as parents is not innocence forever, but that they will choose to pursue what is true, good, and beautiful.
Philippians 4:8 says, “Brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.” It is true that we should choose to think about these things but that doesn’t mean we want our kids to be ignorant to the ways of the world. The Bible itself is not ignorant to the ways of the world but tells it as it is and thus describes a lot of deeply disturbing things.
A dear pastor friend, Vince Hinders, shared a parenting approach I’ve found helpful along these lines. I don’t remember exactly how he’d refer to it but I’ll call it “the funnel to freedom.” I say “freedom” because that should always be the parent’s goal. We don’t want bland conformity, we want peace, love, and flourishing.
I call it the “funnel of freedom” because God’s “commandments are not burdensome” (1 John 5:3), they are rather, the “perfect law of liberty” (James 1:25). Jesus wants His children to live in freedom (Galatians 5:1). Guardrails, far from being a burden, are actually a huge blessing.
God’s commands are good and keep us on track which allow us to flourish. Imagine with me that “Thomas the Train” wants to be free to run on the grass with the horses. So he jumps the tracks to pursue freedom. What does Thomas’ “freedom” look like? It looks like a derailed train lying in the grass. The train tracks are the very thing that provided freedom to Thomas, but he railed against them, and it led to futility, not freedom.
God’s perfect rules allow us to live perfectly free, free to be and do what we were intended to be and do. Thomas might think he’s most free off the tracks but that’s simply not true. Whether Thomas likes it or not, he’s a train. And whether we like it or not, we are human, not God. We flourish and experience the freedom God intended for us when we obey His will.
The concept is pretty simple but important to remember. When kids are younger they should have less freedom and more supervision but as kids get older they should have more freedom and less supervision. Basically, our kids will quickly be free to do whatever they want, whenever they want. We want to help them choose the good while they are still around us and we have substantial influence in their lives.
Paul David Tripp says it this way,
Successful parenting is the rightful, God-ordained loss of control. The goal of parenting is to work ourselves out of a job. The goal of parenting is to raise children who were once totally dependent on us to be independent, mature people who, with reliance on God and proper connectedness to the Christian community, are able to stand on their own two feet.[4]
Holiness, not Innocence
We should want our kids to be holy. But what is holiness? What does it mean to live lives of holiness and godliness? To be holy means to be set apart. What does that mean? Well, when I was in a traditional church (before starting a different expression) I preached in my fancy white preaching shoes.
My fancy white shoes are set apart. I don’t use them to mow. They’re crispy white because I only wear them to preach. They’re set apart for that purpose. I have other shoes that are green and busted pretty bad. But my white shoes are set apart for a different purpose.
Christians are supposed to be set apart too. We shouldn’t walk through the grass, so to speak. Jesus wants His people set aside for His purposes. But holiness does not mean we don’t know about the world. It means we choose to be set apart for the Lord’s purposes. Holiness is not ignorance. It’s actually the opposite. It’s knowledge that God is good and His ways are good. And it’s choosing that good.
It’s important to remember what Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 5. He says,
I wrote you in my earlier letter that you shouldn’t make yourselves at home among the sexually promiscuous. I didn’t mean that you should have nothing at all to do with outsiders of that sort. You’d have to leave the world entirely to do that! What I mean is you shouldn’t act as if everything is just fine when a friend who claims to be a Christian is promiscuous or crooked, is flippant with God or rude to friends, gets drunk or becomes greedy and predatory. You can’t just go along with this, treating it as acceptable behavior for a Jesus follower. I’m not responsible for what outsiders do, but we do have some responsibility for those within our community of believers.[5]
Holiness, being set apart for Jesus’ purpose, is an expectation for Christians; not everyone in the world. We need to help our kids see the utter goodness of Jesus so they choose holiness. We shouldn’t try to have them leave the world. Even the Amish can’t leave the world, and all their precautions—from drab colors to no cell phones—do not guarantee holiness. Although, it does seem to guarantee legalism.
The reality is, our kids are not, nor will they be, forever innocent. But, in the midst of a sinful world, they can actively choose the set apart purposes of God. They can choose to love God and love others. They can choose to be salt in a world of decay and light in a world of darkness. That is our aim.
Parenting, not Protecting
Our kids go from soiling their laundry to leaving in around 17 years. Yep, there are around 14 years between our kids pooping on their own and them driving on their own. The choices we help them make and the way we guide them between those two milestones matter.
If we’re not working on the slow release now, “the funnel to freedom,” what kind of shape are they and we going to be in when they’re able to legally leave; and watch and play whatever they want, whenever they want on their phone? Are we wisely preparing them for the future?
I think coaching is a good metaphor for parenting. Parents give rules, encourage, and discipline, but they’re not actually on the field. Parents, like coaches, prepare kids for the on-field decisions but can’t make those decisions in real time. Also, both parents and coaches review those decisions and outcomes so that they will be better in the future. If a coach never lets the players suit up and go on the field themselves it will hinder their growth. Similarly, parents must wisely release their kids to make their own decisions.
In Jonathan Haidt’s important book, The Anxious Generation, he says two trends have led to our kid’s generation being “the anxious generation”: overprotection in the real world and underprotection in the virtual world. Instead, parents are called to parent. That is, parents prepare, train, release, and coach, in both the real world and virtual world.
As parents, we are called to love the LORD our God with all we are and His word is to be on our hearts. Then, and only then, are we in a good place to get God’s word inside of our kid’s hearts and minds. When we know God’s love and love God, then we will talk about Him and His goodness when we sit at home, walk at a park, or drive on the road; in the morning, the afternoon, and when we go to bed. Then we’ll have reminders of His love and truth in car and on our walls (see Deuteronomy 6). Then we’ll authentically love Jesus and Jesus will be super appealing to our kids.
As parents, we are not to do things that exasperate our children and make them angry. Instead, we are to lovingly and carefully teach them as they grow up and help them understand the good news of Jesus, and help them to obey His good commands (Ephesians 6:4).
Our goal as parents is not to protect our kids from everything. We can’t and in the end, that wouldn’t help them anyhow. As Jesus said, “In the world you will have tribulation” (John 16:33). Instead, we want to help our kids see the glory and goodness of Jesus and thus chose virtue and holiness.
Conclusion
If I were to summarize my philosophy of parenting (and I think I have the support of Scripture): Radically love Jesus and seek to lovingly share His goodness with your children. Let’s help our kids choose virtue even though they know about vice. Let’s help them choose to be set apart for Jesus’ purposes because they love Jesus and have seen us love Jesus.
Notes
[1] Paul David Tripp, Age of Opportunity: A Biblical Guide to Parenting Teens.
[2] Karen Swallow Prior, On Reading Well, 14-15.
[3] Paul David Tripp, Age of Opportunity: A Biblical Guide to Parenting Teens.
[4] Adapted from Eugene Peterson’s paraphrase, The Message.
Photo by kevin laminto
What if we were Intergenerational instead of Isolating?
What if church were different? What if we were intergenerational instead of isolating? What if older Christians could build up younger ones, and what if younger ones could bless older ones? One of the major problems in American Christianity is we are not passing on our faith to our kids. In fact, a recent study has estimated that over 40 million young people who were raised in Christian homes could walk away from a life with Jesus by 2050. One of the answers to this problem is for Christians of different generations to be together.
Many churches isolate the generations from one another. Kids are siloed from seniors and young adults are isolated from older adults. This is problematic for several reasons. For one, Scripture presumes that Christian formation occurs within intergenerational, familial, and community settings[1] (e.g., Deut. 6:4-9; 11:19; 32:46-47; Ps. 78:6; Prov. 22:6; Eph. 6:4).
Second, intentionally mixing the generations in a church uniquely nurtures faith formation for all ages.[2] It “creates opportunities for adults, youth, and children to build relationships across the age spectrum, to share each other’s spiritual journeys, and to learn from and encourage those ahead of us on the journey as well as those coming along behind.”[3] Mixing in this way stimulates “healthy spiritual growth and development across the generations.”[4]
At the Gathering, where I pastor, we have childcare for kids ages 1 to 6 during the teaching time but we love to have kids involved! We believe families, singles, retirees, under-employed, and over-employed all journeying together to pursue Jesus is the ideal. Seeing each other authentically loving Jesus through the thick and thin of life blesses the whole church. We learn from each other and grow to understand and love each other more. We do have childcare for young kids as a service to parents, but we care about kids learning and seeing the whole church body love Jesus.
Yesterday at the church gathering, we sang the old powerful song by Keith Green, “There Is A Redeemer.” I was standing by the young kids and it was beautiful. A young black boy swung his little fox stuffed animal around while belting out “Thank you, oh my Father for giving us Your Son…” There was a little brunette boy coloring and singing and a little blonde girl with fake fish on her fingers, not singing, but wearing the biggest grin.
Let’s not fumble the handoff. Let’s live genuine lives of love as we wholeheartedly follow Jesus. Let’s worship Jesus and ensure they see us worship Jesus. And let’s have fun with them as we do so. This, I believe, is especially important when there are so many single-parent families. The biological mom or dad may not be around, but the church has moms and dads aplenty. The church may not be able to literally replace a parent but it can provide faithful familiar mentors. The church is a family, let’s be the intergenerational family God has called us to be.
The need for intentional, costly discipleship for children and youth from an early age has never been greater. New cultural pressures continue to widen the gap between daily American life and biblically reinforced orthodoxy and orthopraxy. Long gone are the days when Christians represented 80-90 percent of mainstream culture… Across many different research projects, studies have found that the most important driver of retention is actually pretty simple: actively engaging youth into a full life with Jesus in their family and church. It turns out that being in a family and church that talks with Jesus— where they actively evangelize, serve together, know other adults that take their faith seriously, and live the Gospel and not sin management— will more often than not produce young people who want to continue on in a life with God.[5]
Notes
[1] Holly Catterton Allen, Christine Lawton, and Cory L. Seibel, Intergenerational Christian Formation: Bringing the Whole Church Together in Ministry, Community, and Worship, 65.
[2] Allen, Lawton, and Seibel, Intergenerational Christian Formation: Bringing the Whole Church Together in Ministry, Community, and Worship, 143.
[3] Ibid., 22.
[4] Ibid., 95.
[5] “The Great Opportunity,” 59.
***Porn*** (pt 1)
[This post contains explicit descriptions and is not suitable for all audiences]
How should we think about porn?
Porn has been normalized and seems to be accepted for the most part in mainstream culture. It may not always be openly promoted but it seems to be assumed. It seems wise, in part because of porns prevalence, to at least consider the impact it is having and the place it should (or shouldn’t) have in our lives.
In America, there is no broadly shared consensus regarding sex.[i] For example, there are various answers to these important questions: What is the purpose of sex and when and with whom should we have it? Connected to people’s view of sex is people’s view of pornography.
Statistics,[ii] as well as mere observation of culture (e.g. Snapchat, Instagram), show us that there is moral ambiguity towards porn. In fact, teens and young adults view overeating as more immoral than viewing porn.[iii] So, as “access to pornography has increased, the stigma toward it has seemingly decreased.”[iv] I would suggest, however, that we shouldn’t assume this is a good thing.
I don’t think that we should blindly accept that porn consumption doesn’t matter. We would be wise to have and be able to defend our position on porn. As Socrates reportedly said, “The unexamined life is not worth living.”
How do we evaluate the acceptability of porn? There are two main ways we can evaluate porn and I believe they are both important to look at. We can look at porn from a 1) natural perspective and from a 2) supernatural perspective.
The Natural Perspective
Here are two questions I believe it is wise to answer: Does porn promote human flourishing? Does porn help individuals and society thrive? Those are obviously big questions (that we can not exhaustively cover here) but they are important to consider.
Porn and Self-image
Porn can turn healthy self-image into an unhealthy “sex-image” where people measure themselves by the images they view or by the images their partner views. Porn can very negatively affect self-image. For example, “A 2012 study of college-aged women with male partners who used porn concluded that the young women suffered diminished self-esteem, relationship quality and sexual satisfaction correlated with their partners’ porn use.”[v]
Look before you… Entertainment
There is something about physical harm and pain that reminds us to look before we… leap. Why? Because we leaped one too many times without looking and our brain has trained us not to do that again. That’s the way our brains work. And our brains work well. That is, at least, for a lot of things. However, our brains may work against us when it comes to others things.
We sit down and watch a cute, funny dog video on YouTube and that’s fine; no pain. Actually, we quite enjoy it. Our brains do not tell us: Look before you… watch. So, we don’t. We don’t consider what we watch or how often we watch because, after all, we like it.
Plus, entertainment is everything.[1] But, is it? Or, should it be? We would do well to consider this question as (likely) the most entertained people in all of history.[2]
What is “entertainment”? What does that word mean? It has been defined in this way: “the action of providing or being provided with amusement or enjoyment.” So, entertainment gives us pleasure, enjoyment, and diversion; especially by a performance of some kind. For instance, I was entertained at NitroCircus when Travis Pastrana did a double backflip on a dirt bike.
To quote someone from a different arena, it would have been fitting for Pastrana to scream out:
“Are you not entertained?! Are you not entertained?! Is this not why you are here?!”
There is a danger that people will die in entertaining us but is there also a danger for us as we are endlessly entertained?
Neil Postman wrote in 1985 about the danger of, as his book title says, Amusing Ourselves to Death, and that was before public internet, let alone social media and the smart phone. It is not an understatement to say that we are likely to amuse ourselves to death. There are serious health risks for us when all we care about is entertainment. There is the further danger that we’re not living and loving as we should. We’re liable to amuse ourselves until death, and never do anything worthwhile with the time we’ve been given.
Constructing A Christ-Exalting Home
Proverbs 24:3 says, “By wisdom a house is built, and by understanding it is established.” Building a house takes wisdom. Building a house takes intentionality. Building a house takes partnership. How much more a Christ-exalting home?!
How is a biblical—Christ-exalting—home constructed? A Christ-exalting home is certainly not the standard option. It’s not the default model. It is intentional and premeditated. The home on its own tends toward chaos, not Christ.
A family that functions biblically and intentionally does not happen haphazardly. Wisdom, intentionality, and partnership are needed. Where will parents receive the tools they need? Or can they just subcontract the work out and have someone else deal with the messy issues of building up a family?
My goal here is not to layout the “blue print” for exactly what the house should look like. That is not my job. My desire is to point you to the crucial need that we all have to build on the firm bedrock of Christ. I can’t build it for you. But I can and must tell you to center your family’s life on Christ!
Parenting is a Blast!
Parenting is a blast to my plans, dreams, and aspirations. Parenting is a drain on my time and money. Parenting is probably the hardest thing I’ve ever done; even beyond the difficulties of being married for 8 years.
Diapers, dishes, and unprecedented decibel levels, parenting challenges me and my wife. Parenting is a blast to our self-control and self-sufficiency. We crash and come to the end of ourselves on a daily basis.
We daily need to point each other towards grace and patience, but I’m not saying we always do. We more and more each see our need to abide in Christ and thus bear fruit (Jn. 15:4), fruit like grace and patience; but, again, I’m not saying we always do.
Parenting has added to me and my wife’s chore list, carpet, and cares but it is a blast in a fun sense as well. Even on days when the vacuum cleaner explodes and sends shards of old messes back to their familiar home, or when the entire glass of orange juice and bowl of milk gets dumped on the floor (in the dining room that has white carpet!), or when the kids are begging for food when dinner is still being cleaned up…
Even on those types of days (most days), when the kids are in bed, we often find ourselves looking at pictures of our kids and recounting the day’s fun stories.
Two lessons we’re trying to remember in the midst of the blast:
- Abide in Christ and look to Him for grace and patience. He has been gracious and patient with me and my wife and He can help us be gracious and patient with our kids.
- Time flys. So we should enjoy all the fun with our kids as we can. And say “yes” whenever we can (without spoiling them). Soon it will be they that say “no” to us.
Technology: Connected and Out of Touch
How surreal, I am sitting in a Starbucks and there is an older couple sitting across from me. By all appearances they do not know each other. Their “date,” from what I can tell from spying, consists of looking at their cell phone (maybe the new iPhone 6s), touching it, and occasionally showing each other something on their phone; no doubt a new high score on “angry birds” or some other profound thing like a YouTube video of a monkey.
This is surreal for two reasons: 1) When this couple got together and started dating they could never have imagined the technology that would be available in the palm of their hand. Maybe this partly explains why they are so captivated by their phone and not by the actual person setting beside them. 2) When this couple got together, maybe thirty years ago, they could not have imagined wanting to hold some device in their hand rather than their loved ones’ hand.
Yet how things change. Affections fade and technology grows. And perhaps there is a correlation between the two distancing polls. If we hold a device in our hand instead of our loved ones’ hand, if we have “facetime” instead of real face time, if we have “facebook” and not time with real faces, if we have tweets and not conversations there will necessarily be a distancing effect from technology. And it will likely be that as technology advances so will be the chasm between relationships. However, if we start to put the work in on our relationships that any computer programmer puts in on technology then we may be able to keep pace with the discordant dissidents of technology. But this will require the intentionality and work ethic of those that are bringing us these great advances in technology.
In all of this realize that I am by no means saying that technology and advances in technology are bad, they are not in and of themselves (For instance, things like Skype can help relationships). Yet we must be very conscious in our use of technology. We must consider, am I playing “Tomb Raider” (or whatever it is called) when I should be looking deeply into my loved ones’ eyes? Am I “iTexting” when I should be talking to the person beside me? When I turn on my phone do I turn off my head? Does the “feed” on Facebook or Twitter feed my soul and intellect or does it leave me malnourished and hungry for something of substance like a book? Does being connected to the internet connect me to the world or allow me to be safely removed from it?
I have found these questions surprisingly relevant and present but often unheeded in my own life. I have noticed on more than a few occasions when my family is visiting that we will set around in the living room with more than one person on a technological device. We’ll be “hanging out” yet the majority of the people in the room are on a computer or some such thing. This form of “hanging out” is much different then I remember growing up, and I’m only twenty-eight! My kids will have to be especially careful in their use of technology.
Family Worship
Regaining family worship is essential to having a church, culture, and society that lives for the LORD. It is when parents love the LORD their God with all their heart that they will teach their kids God’s truth diligently (see Deut. 6:4-9). I pray that the Church will resolve and say with Joshua, “As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord” (Josh. 24:15).
Family worship does not need to take a lot of time but should be regular and strive to be appropriate for the age groups involved. What do we do in family worship? There are three vital things:
- Read: It is the Word of God that is “profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work” (2 Tim. 3:16-17). It fun to ask a question about one of the verses that was read or have the child pick one verse to ask about. It is also helpful to teach kids to pray about something that is read in the Bible.
- Pray: We should teach our kids to go to God in prayer. This teaches them reliance on God.
- Sing: We are exhorted all over Scripture to sing songs to the Lord and this is something kids have the tendency to especially enjoy.
Other things that are helpful:
Bible Memory: Almost every night before the kids go to bed we say a Bible verse with them. My son at this time has around fifteen Bible verses memorized. It has been fun hearing him recite the verses and asking to say the Bible verse. He asks to say “the heart one,” referring to Proverbs 3:5-6.
Catechism: Another practice that has been helpful is teaching our kids theological questions and there answers. Uriah is part of the way through the little book at this point. It has been great to see the connections he is already making regarding the things of God because of this practice.
Constant Intentionality: Take every chance you get to teach your kids (Deut. 6:6-9). When the sun is setting overhead tell your kids who made it and praise God for it. When a need arises pray about it and be sure to include the kids.
Resources:
- Child’s Story Bible by Cathrine Vos
- Jesus Story Book Bible by Sally Lloyd-Jones
- Big Truths for Young Hearts by Bruce Ware
- My 1st Book Of Questions and Answers by Carine Mackenzie
- familyworshipproject.com
- Read narrative portions of Scripture or even just retell them. This helps to engage kid’s attention.
- Family Worship: In the Bible, in History & in Your Home by Donald S. Whitney
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