Great Articles on Discipling Your Kids

New Horizons takes Christian families seriously. They generally have at least one great article each month that I find helpful, (as a Christian father), to navigate my family in and through life with covenant faithfulness.

This issue that I’m highlighting is especially helpful. I encourage you to check out these articles. Read them. Digest them. Pray over them. Put them into practice. And share them with others.

Kids, Character, and Catechism by L. Charles Jackson

The Lost Art and Practice of Family Devotions by Brad Winsted

The Divines’ Intent by Sidney D. Dyer

Edification—not Provocation by Arie van Eyk

If you would like to search New Horizon’s great archive of past articles, click here.

Enjoy,
Dale

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Voddie Baucham on Family Worship

To accompany my two posts below on family worship, I thought I would add these great videos featuring Voddie Baucham. They’re very brief, but they hit all the right points…

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A Few More Notes on Family Worship

Here are the rest of my notes from this past Sunday’s lesson on family worship. Click here to get the notes from part 1.

Possible outline for your family time together…

Caveat: What I have provided in this packet is a variety of different resources for Family Worship. By no means would or should you try to do all the things I have provided. I tried to include things that would be appropriate for the various ages that might be around the table in a variety of families. In fact, it might be better to use these resources throughout several days, not just during one day. Here’s a sample of what you might include during your time of Family Worship…

Open in prayer (it might be a good time to pray for the Lord’s blessing during your time together and to thank God for the opportunity to get together.)

Read something from the Bible. (in your packet I have included a chapter from the Psalms as well as a Bible story from the book of Acts). Not all children’s story Bibles are created equal. Of course, the best book to read is the Bible itself. But there are some fine Bible story books that faithfully capture the biblical text and yet communicate the text in a way that is helpful to children of a variety of ages (including the adults). Click here to learn more about the one that we use.

Sing a hymn or praise chorus (or even the Doxology or Gloria Patri). Remember this is Family Worship. Worship includes singing. When your kids are young, they think you sing great, no matter what the truth is. Worry less about how you sound and more about doing it. If you need to, buy some CDs with songs you know. As my children get older, we’re able to sing hymns from our hymnals. You can purchase used hymnals at used bookstores, flea markets, etc. Buy one whenever you see one. Old hymnals are great spiritual investments.

Read a devotional. (the good thing about devotionals is very often they come with questions, prayers, etc. You can really get the children involved with these.) One of our favorites is called, Sticky Situations. A moral/spiritual dilemma is presented for each day of the year. And for each dilemma, four or five possible responses are offered along with an appropriate Bible verse to help your family reflect on what the right choice should be. My kids LOVE doing this.

Apostles’ Creed, Lord’s Prayer, or Catechism. Work on memorization. Catechisms were used throughout most of Christian history to teach children (and adults) through a sequence of stated questions and answers (with scriptural support). There are some good children’s catechisms available. You’ll be amazed at what your children can memorize. Memorizing is key (understanding it will grow as they get older). Of course, memorizing Scripture should be your top priority.

Prayer – Have time of prayer. Initially mom and dad lead. Take prayer requests. Remember the church, the sick, family, friends, etc. Also, pray for the day (or the next day). Start teaching your children to be thankful. Find things to thank God for. Also, start teaching your children how to pray for forgiveness (repentance). You’ll also want to spend time praising God for who he is. We also pray for missionaries and Christians around the world.

You don’t need to cover every aspect of prayer every single time you pray. But throughout a week, you ought to cover most of it. You don’t want your children growing up thinking that the only time you pray is when you need something from God.

Offer your family a benediction or blessing at the end. Make up something your family might remember and that will be meaningful to them throughout their lives (it could become a family tradition… as well as comforting). Or even better, find a blessing in the Bible and tweak it to make it your family’s official blessing.

Last thoughts…

Again, you won’t always cover all of these components every single time you gather for Family Worship. Sometimes you might. It might be that you do different things throughout the day (in the morning, at dinner, before bed, etc.).

At the end of the day, there’s no magic formula or resource. What will work best for your family will be what you follow through with. In other words, no matter how many resources you have, if you don’t use them, they won’t work for you. Find what works! Don’t stress out. But do something. Be intentional. Trust God.

Grace and Truth,
Dale

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A few notes on Family Worship

Family Worship is one of my favorite things to talk about. I had the privilege to speak on just that topic to one of our Sunday school classes yesterday. What follows is from the outline that I gave the folks in the class.

Family Worship
Sunday Morning, July 18, 2010
Intergenerational Summer Sunday School Class

Family worship (or family devotions) is as much about the experience of worshiping with your family and modeling your commitment to Christ to your children… as it is imparting information about our faith (maybe even more so). Of course, you do want to use the time together to instruct, but don’t underestimate how powerful the experience itself will be in the life of your family.

The point here is that you are worshiping as a family, not just having Bible study (Although, it wouldn’t be a bad idea to have a Bible study as well. But that’s another topic). The act of worshiping with your family day after day, month and month, and year after year, in and of itself, will be instructive in the life of your children as the various components of Family Worship sink into their hearts and minds and the Spirit does his work of formation and transformation in their lives.

This is not to mention the wonderful memory that will be with your family throughout their lives as well as the great tradition that is being modeled and hopefully will be lived out generation after generation.

There’s a story that I like that makes this point. I’ve heard several versions of it, but the one that I first heard went like this: There was an atheist in England who wrote the local paper and said that if preaching was so important to Christians during their worship services, why didn’t more Christians remember what was taught in those sermons. Supposedly, the next week a pastor wrote the same paper and responded by saying that he had been married for 25 years and for all those years his wife had cooked him dinner each night. He said that even though he couldn’t remember everything she had ever cooked him, the point was that all those meals still resulted in nourishing him.

Family Worship is a lot like that. To be sure, your children will remember various things that they were taught, devotions that were shared, prayers that were prayed, etc. But they won’t remember most of the specifics. It’s doubtful that one of your children will approach you one day and tell you that the gem that you shared with them on Tuesday, July 2, four years ago, still lingers in their minds as a monumental moment in their spiritual formation.

However, I hasten to add that I wholeheartedly believe that their experience of receiving the daily or weekly blessing of gathering with Mom and Dad and brother and/or sister to pray together, read Scripture together, sing together, etc., will nourish their hearts, souls, and minds, and it will be effectual in their lives as believers.

Stay tuned for a few more of the thoughts that I shared yesterday.

Grace and Truth,
Dale

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Join us Sunday

This Sunday we will be learning about (and doing) Family Worship (or Family Devotions) during our Intergenerational Sunday school class in the Family Life Center.

 

The passing down of our faith is a very important theme that runs through the whole Bible. Parents (and grandparents) are encouraged to disciple their children and their children’s children.

 

Yet, I have found that quite often folks don’t practice Family Worship because they’ve never done it before. Or, they think that they are required to do it in a particular way. I believe that one of the key ways we learn to do something and get comfortable with it is simply by doing it.

 

Therefore, this Sunday morning I’ll share a little about Family Worship, it’s importance, my family’s experience with it, etc. And then… we as individual families are going to “do” Family Worship. I’ll provide an outline of possible components that families can do together so that they can experience this wonderful blessing from God.

 

As important as passing the baton of faith to our children is, equally as important is imparting the lasting memory of worshiping God together as a family. That will be a memory that remains in their hearts and minds all the days of their lives. It will also serve as a formative experience that will help them continue growing in the grace and knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ.

 

See you Sunday,

Pastor Dale

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The Importance of Catechesis

I’ve written many posts, articles, and sermons on the importance of catechesis in the family and in the church. Far too many to link here.

However, there are two very recent articles that have come out in the last week or so that address the very same issue. Both deal with J.I. Packer’s recent book and his comments about the importance of catechesis, and when Packer talks, we all need to listen.

The first one is found at Christianity Today and is an excerpt from his most recent book, Grounded in the Gospel: Building Believers the Old-Fashioned Way, which he cowrote with Gary A. Parrett. Here’s a snippet from that excerpt…

Historically, the church’s ministry of grounding new believers in the rudiments of Christianity has been known as catechesis—the growing of God’s people in the gospel and its implications for doctrine, devotion, duty, and delight. It is a ministry that has waxed and waned through the centuries. It flourished between the second and fifth centuries in the ancient church. Those who became Christians often moved into the faith from radically different worldviews. The churches rightly sought to ensure that these life-revolutions were processed carefully, prayerfully, and intentionally, with thorough understanding at each stage.

Click here to read the whole piece.

The other column is by Mark Earley at BreakPoint. Here’s an excerpt from it…

There is generally need for three distinct forms of catechetical ministry. They say it’s protocatechesis, which refers to teaching what many today would call “seekers” or what the ancients called “inquirers”; catechesis proper, which refers to the formal work of preparing children or adult converts for baptism or confirmation; and ongoing catechesis, which is the never-ending teaching and formation of believers.

Click here to read the whole column and make sure to see the links at the bottom of it.

PS – Each Sunday I post the questions and answers from the Heidelberg Catechism. It’s a wonderful tool to help you grow in the grace and knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Stand Firm,
Dale

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Covenantal Blessings

Genesis 7:1

The Lord then said to Noah, “Go into the ark, you and your whole family, because I have found you righteous in this generation.

 God works through families. He blesses through families. He curses through families. This is the covenantal nature of God’s work throughout Scripture.

Noah found favor with God (Gen. 6:8). Noah was found by God to be a righteous man, blameless among the people of his time, and walking with God (Gen. 6:9). Because God saw Noah in such a condition, Noah’s whole family was blessed – his wife, sons, and daughters-in-law.

We find God’s covenantal faithfulness in the New Testament as well.  The Syrophoenician woman’s daughter was possessed by an evil spirit (Mk. 7:25). So her mother went to Jesus and begged him to deliver her from it. After testing her, Jesus rewarded the mother for her persistence and faith by healing the daughter from the spirit (Mk. 7:29). The child was blessed because of the mother’s faith. This is how God works.

Psalm 128:1-4 reminds us of this.

    Blessed are all who fear the Lord,

        who walk in his ways.

    [2] You will eat the fruit of your labor;

        blessings and prosperity will be yours.

    [3] Your wife will be like a fruitful vine

        within your house;

    your sons will be like olive shoots

        around your table.

    [4] Thus is the man blessed

        who fears the Lord.

Noah was blessed in such a way. So was Abraham. So was the Syrophoenician woman and Lydia and the Philippian jailer.

If this is how God works, does it not then behoove us to pursue righteousness and blamelessness for all we are worth? Should we not desire to walk with the Lord daily? Wouldn’t fearing the Lord be wise? The personal blessings that would flow from such a life seem reason enough. But the covenantal blessings on your children and your children’s children seem to make this absurdly obvious and compelling. Even in the land of rugged individualism, we can grasp this.

In light of this, let us resolve to give our lives for our spouses, our children, and to all to whom we can minister. Our lives for theirs. It is only in this kind of death that we might find life – for ourselves and for our families.

Stand Firm,
Dale

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