Still Life with Bible - Vincent Van GoghOne means of grace that we encourage in our congregation is family worship. There are many ways to approach family worship, but to download our resource for it go to Two Crows. So why do we encourage this?
A practical reason Back when NsP was still just a core group of interested people and hadn't been launched yet, I heard a very beautiful description of the covenant given by one of the pastors in our presbytery. "The covenant means the Lord knows how to gather and make disciples by his election and his grace. He is mindful not only of you but of your children. If the covenant is true, then unbelief in our children should be the exception and not the norm." It was moving.
We then went around the room and elder after elder after elder said, "I don't know where my children are spiritually." How can both of these be true? How can the covenant be the good news to us, and a means for God's spreading glory, and the shepherds of his church and their families be cut off from it?! And if this was true of the shepherds, what about the average family out there? Something was missing....
About the same time, my second child was born. On Sunday mornings when my scrunchy pink little bundle of need would start to fuss half way through the sermon, I would scoop her up and leave mom to continue worshiping undisturbed....moms don't get enough of that. So baby and I would roam the halls finishing the sermon by listening to it over the speakers set throughout the church. But while I bounced my baby, I noticed grown babies, junior high kids high schoolers sitting in the halls talking on cell phones and sending text messages. Why weren't they in the worship service? Didn't they and their parents know that the worship of the church includes them? Where were their parents? Did they know about this? Were they okay with it? Turns out, they did know and they were okay. Apparently, just having their kids in the building on Sunday morning was enough. Something was definitely missing...
We decided not to allow this to happen with us, at least not without a fight. So as we were getting ready to head out and be a church ourselves, we reinstated a lost but historic practice - family worship.
A constitutional reason The Book of Church Order of the PCA says in chapter 28, The spiritual nurture, instruction and training of the children of the church are committed by God primarily to their parents. Our church has always believed this, even if it hasn't always been our shared practice - it's right there in the book.
Chapter 28 of BCO continues, The home and the Church should also make special provision for instructing the children in the Bible and in the church Catechisms. It is not an either/or, it is an issue of both/and....we need family worship and ministries of the church for healthy discipleship.
A biblical reason Hear O Israel, the LORD our God, the LORD is one. You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all you soul and with all your might. These words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way and when you lie down and when you rise. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.
Discipleship is a constant activity, for us and for our children. It is done at home and away from home. The two prevailing mistakes we make are to say, "Let the professionals disciple my kids," and "I alone can disciple my kids". Both are distortions of covenant faith and practice. And if we read Deuteronomy 6 in its fullest sense, family and church striving together are the partners God has appointed to stir us to love him with heart and soul and might.
