THE FAMILY: Leaders advocate forgotten discipline of family worship

Did your family practice family worship as you were growing up?

That’s the question Donald Whitney posed last fall to the 115 seminary students in his Personal Spiritual Disciplines classes.

Though a large percentage of the students had grown up in ministers’ homes, only seven came from families that practiced family worship. Of the remaining 108 students, not even one had ever had an opportunity to see family worship in practice.

Whitney, who serves as professor of biblical spirituality at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky., worries that those students are not alone. He said they illustrate a larger trend of Christians ignoring the Bible’s command to practice worship in their homes.

“I’m preaching in a different church just about every week,” he said. “And I’m convinced that in most of our best churches most of the best men in those churches aren’t even praying with their wives, and children if they have them, much less spending 10 minutes in family worship.”

Whitney has authored the book “Family Worship: In the Bible, in History & in Your Home” and says a time of family worship takes no preparation, lasts only 10 minutes and, most importantly, reaps eternal benefits.

Jim Richards, executive director of the Southern Baptists of Texas Convention, agrees with Whitney’s assessment and attributes the lack of family worship in Christian homes to scheduling difficulties and spiritual lethargy.

“We rush through our lives doing good things and leaving out the best,” Richards said. “Another challenge is that families are pulled in different directions. The dad may travel. The mom works outside the home. The kids are in soccer, ballet, music lessons and school activities. But rising above all other reasons (for neglecting family worship) is that adults fail to lead when they know it is the right thing to do.”

So how do you do family worship? According to Whitney, it’s a matter of reading the Bible, praying, and singing.

For Bible readings, families should consider working through books of the Bible chapter-by-chapter, Whitney said, adding that parents may need to explain the meaning of a passage to their children and that narrative passages often work best for small children.

Prayer in family worship can include either the father praying or some member of the family he designates. The specific content of prayers will vary, with some families taking requests and others praying through Psalms, Whitney said.

Singing can be as simple as getting hymnals and selecting a hymn to sing together. Men who do not feel comfortable singing do not have to lead the hymns, but no one should feel embarrassed to sing with his family, Whitney said. He noted that almost everyone’s family has heard him sing around the house or in the shower.

Malcolm Yarnell, assistant dean of theological studies and associate professor of systematic theology at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, said his family finds ways to keep the Bible on their minds throughout the day but makes it a point to keep a regular appointment for family worship every night.

“We usually begin with a Bible reading, focusing on pericopes or thought segments of several verses rather than chapters. Following this, we will have some discussion of the text from Dad and then dialogue over the text among all of us, being careful to pull each of the children into the discussion,” Yarnell explained.

“After this, we will pray, beginning by asking the children to thank God for various things and then asking for prayer requests. Finally, Mom will lead us in a song, usually one verse that the children learn to repeat,” he said.

For Yarnell, spending 15-20 minutes in family worship is well worth the small time commitment it requires.

“We want to live out the Word of God, recognizing that it is living and active,” he said. “The Bible is God’s sufficient instrument in speaking to us all that we need. We believe that God calls to us from the text and invites us to live out of the text.”

Some families may object that they cannot practice family worship because of their unusual circumstances. But there is no such thing as a family in which there is no way to worship together, Whitney said.

If there is no father at home, Scripture gives the mother the responsibility to lead her children in worship, he said. If the father is at home but is not a Christian, inviting him to read the Bible with the family might be a great way to introduce him to the gospel, Whitney added.

If the children are very young, Whitney urged parents to be patient and remember that an important part of the discipline may be simply teaching children to sit in one place for a few minutes.

“Just remember that there is no family worship situation that has not been addressed by Christians for centuries,” Whitney writes in “Family Worship.” “You are not alone in the circumstances that make family worship difficult.”

Richards noted that the travel demands of his current job at times make it impossible for him to join his family for their daily time of worship. But his wife has demonstrated that it is possible to continue family worship and even to thrive in family worship on occasions when the father is not present, he said.

“My wife and I have had two families,” Richards said. “Our girls grew up in a pastor’s home. Our son has grown up in the home of a denominational worker. I was with the girls to provide leadership. My wife provided the stability many nights when I was traveling for the convention. She stayed consistent through my absence.”

Believers who are thinking about beginning a regular time of family worship should realize that almost all of our heroes from church history made family worship a priority, Whitney said. Believers in the patristic era, Martin Luther, the Puritans, Jonathan Edwards, Charles Spurgeon, Martyn Lloyd-Jones and John Piper all stressed the discipline, he said.

But above all, Whitney urges those thinking about beginning family worship to ask themselves a series of questions:
?What better way exists to evangelize your children daily?
?What better way to provide an opportunity for children to ask about the things of God in a natural context?
?What better way for you to transmit your core beliefs to your children?
?What better way for your children to see the ongoing spiritual example of their parents?
?What better way to provide reproducible examples to your children of how to have a Christian home?
?Isn’t this what you really want to do?

After considering these questions, Whitney said, a man who wants to begin family worship should say to his wife: “I’ve come to believe that the Bible teaches that I should be leading us in family worship and I want to start today. I have a lot to learn about it, but I want to do what’s right. Will you join me?”

Yarnell, Richards and Whitney agree that men who take that step will produce fruit of eternal significance.