Family Worship

"Listen, O Israel!  The Lord is our God, the Lord alone.  And you must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your strength.  And you must commit yourselves wholeheartedly to these commands that I am giving you today.  Repeat them again and again to your children.  Talk about them at home and when you are on the road, when you are going to bed and when you are getting up.  Tie them on your hands and wear them on your foreheads as reminders.  Write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates."  Deuteronomy 6:4-9

What is family worship?  It's simply trying to live out the above Scriptures.  Although my husband and I grew up in Christian homes, this idea of family worship is still somewhat new to us.  We don't pull it off perfectly by any stretch of the imagination, but we're making efforts and strides in this area of our family life and loving the sweet times of worship we have together.

Sadly, very few professing Christian families spend even 10 minutes per week reading the Bible together.  (This is according to a Barna poll discussed in Revolutionary Parenting by Barna).  My husband and I want to be counter-cultural and even counter the ever-more-worldy-growing church in this area.  This does not mean that we don't go to church.  It just means that once or twice a week of exposing our kids to God's Word in church isn't enough.  It doesn't fulfill the command of Deuteronomy 6.  We're supposed to be constantly speaking of the Lord, His Word, and His marvelous works to our children.  This is a large part of the reason we've chosen to homeschool our kids.

I love the topic of family worship and my posts on family worship can basically be divided into two categories:  family worship/devotions in the home, and family worship at church (the family-integrated church).
Below are a few of my posts from each category.

Family worship in the home

*Family worship is not just for those in the family-integrated church

*Family-friendly devotionals

*Scripture memory and catechism as tools for training up our children


The Family-integrated Church

*What is a family-integrated church?

*The sufficiency of Scripture in the family-integrated church

*Multigenerational considerations in the family-integrated church

* The priority of hospitality in the family-integrated church

*The role of youth groups in the seeker-sensitive and emergent church movements

*An alternative to youth group

*The parent factor in the family-integrated church