Family worship can be as simple as three syllables: read, pray, sing. (Discussion of the third chapter of Don Whitney’s book, Family Worship).
Intro
The “Gospel Shaped Home Podcast” is a family discipleship resource from Providence Baptist Church in Raleigh, North Carolina. It aims to equip you and your family to be on mission with God to the end of the street and the ends of the earth.
Andy Owens
Hi, Providence families. Thank you for joining us again. I’m Andy Owens, the pastor of family discipleship. Once again, I’m joined by savage man, Daniel Savage, that is. Daniel, would you like to defend yourself?
Daniel Savage
No, I am a savage and have always been one.
Andy
Okay, well, I’m glad you’re here with me today.
Daniel
Me too.
Andy
This week we’re discussing chapter three of Don Whitney’s little book, Family Worship. This is the most practical chapter of the book. This is the nuts and bolts. How do you lead family worship? His answer is three simple words, three syllables even, read, pray, sing. Daniel, let’s jump right in and talk about reading the Bible as a family. How should families decide what passage to read for family worship?
Daniel
I think they shouldn’t overcomplicate it. I think having some sort of plan is helpful. By plan, I mean systematically reading through some. Book of the Bible is probably the best, so reading through a Book of the Bible, starting in the beginning, reading sections at a time.
Andy
Like a whole chapter?
Daniel
I think it depends on how old your kids are, but I think more like sections.
Andy
Okay.
Daniel
I’m thinking about the Book of Mark. We’re reading through that right now as a church. We’re using that in our family worship time in the mornings. I don’t typically read the whole chapter to the kids. I pick one paragraph or section that I read to them, and we discuss that. I think reading through a book that way just eases the burden of trying to figure out what you’re going to read, trying to find the right passage for the day. You’re reading through a Book of the Bible, plus I think that has some advantages.
Andy
inaudible
Daniel
Yeah. It has some advantages in terms of teaching.
Andy
Yeah.
Daniel
You’re showing them that the Bible is not individual…
Andy
A random, haphazard collection of stories.
Daniel
…That’s right.
Andy
Right. God, He has actually inspired it in this order as well.
Daniel
That’s right. Yeah.
Andy
Yeah. That’s good. Okay. One of the things Dr. Whitney talks about is that when your kids are younger, you might want to focus more on narrative passages, both short passages and also narrative. That’s stories. That’s maybe focusing on the gospels, focusing on some of the Old Testament narratives, but less complex passages for the sake of younger kids. What about any time where you would ever recommend using something other than just the Bible, whether it’s a storybook Bible or a devotional book? Any thoughts on that?
Daniel
Yeah, so I think using the Bible is always important, but I do think that there are other really helpful tools out there, especially for younger kids. We used the Jesus Storybook Bible a lot.
Andy
Sally Lloyd-Jones.
Daniel
That’s right. That was really helpful when the kids were really young. I’ve always tried to incorporate actually reading the Bible, but I did that far less when they were younger. We would use those stories that she’s put together to talk about big ideas and to talk about God and the gospel. I think that those tools are really helpful. I think, in addition, other kinds of devotionals and things can be helpful. I think you guys are going to highlight some of those on the website.
Andy
That’s right. We are. We are. Yeah, so for us, we also used storybook Bibles. We loved David Helms’ Big Picture Story Bible. Marty Machowski’s Gospel Story Bible, that’s more appropriate for elementary-aged kids probably. We typically didn’t actually use those during family worship time. We would just read a small passage from the Bible, and we would read those storybook Bibles at other times. We’d do them as part of the bedtime routine or just read them during free time. We kind of had a combination of both, but those are really helpful as are some of the other resources.
Andy
Some of the devotional guides that we’re going to highlight on the website and for our families, they take more of a systematic approach. Instead of just going through one section of scripture, they try to help families think about what Christians have always believed and taught. What are the major truths, the major doctrines of the Bible? What does the Bible have to say about the Bible, and about God, and about humanity, and about Christ, and redemption, and the church?
It can be helpful in seasons to use a resource like that to give some of this kind of big picture systematic training of what do Christians believe about these things, but I would say, at the end of the day, the Bible, the Bible, the Bible. We read the Bible. If you don’t ever use anything other than the Bible in family worship times, you’ll be fine. Okay. Second element is prayer. Let’s imagine a family in our church. They’ve not done family worship together, maybe outside of meals and bedtime. They’re not in the habit of praying together very often. How would you encourage them to start?
Daniel
Well, I think the easiest way to get your kids involved in a time of prayer is setting it up by asking them some questions. You can ask them what would they like to pray about. One of the things we did when the kids were really young was just ask one thing that they’re grateful for and then after they say it, have them thank God for whatever that thing was. That begins to help them to just get familiar with being involved in the prayer time. As they’ve gotten older, we will sometimes go through and assign different things to each kid. “Can you pray for this?” and, “Can you pray for this?” They will do that. Then based on their age, those prayers sound a lot different.
Andy
Sure.
Daniel
Our oldest prays a little bit more and can formulate a prayer differently than our youngest who basically just parrots back whatever the request was, which is fine.
Andy
Sure.
Daniel
We encourage that and rejoice in the participation.
Andy
Right. Yeah, I mean, when our kids were young, we would regularly intentionally do that. We would even say phrase after phrase and have them repeat us to learn to pray for needs, for other people in the family, for the church, for the nations.
Daniel
Yeah. The other thing is as they’re just starting out, probably the most important part of it is them listening to you pray.
Andy
Modeling prayer. Yeah.
Daniel
That’s right. They can attempt to pray, and you rejoice over that. You encourage them. Then where they’re really learning a lot about prayer is just listening to you, and how you pray and lift things up to the Lord.
Andy
That’s right.
Daniel
How they hear your heart in that.
Andy
That’s right. Yeah. Let’s just throw out real quickly a couple of categories that if a family’s going to kind of lead their kids to pray, what are some things that families might pray for together? I’m thinking things like you can pray for one another, pray for the other people in the room. You can pray for pastors and other church leaders. Other ideas?
Daniel
Yeah, you can pray for people that you know who have needs. If someone that you know is sick, that’s actually been probably the easiest, most tangible way to get our kids involved in prayer because they can see the need. They understand the sickness, and it’s engaging for them to pray for that person that they know is struggling and so if people are sick or struggling in that way. Also praying for our neighbors, the lost.
Andy
Yeah, lost people.
Daniel
We pray for our church. We pray for different pastors of the church. We pray for Brian, as he’s preparing for Sunday.
Andy
Sure.
Daniel
Those different types of things, and in all that you’re teaching them how to pray, praying for missionaries. The missions festival was really great. It spurred us on to just pray for some of those unreached people groups and things like that.
Andy
One thing you might consider doing is to adopt an unreached people group, or two, or three, and just rotate through praying for God to send laborers into the harvest field amongst an unreached people group. Pray for workers who are there. If there’s someone, a Providence partner, that’s something that we do regularly in our family as well. Those are several ideas, but really there’s just tons of freedom when it comes to prayer, right? The scriptures don’t draw any hard, dark lines around how we should pray, what our prayers should look like. It’s really us acknowledging our weakness, our dependence, our need, and God’s strength, and God’s faithfulness, and leading our children to do the same.
Daniel
Yeah, one of the things he mentions in there is connecting at least some piece of your prayer to what you’ve read in the Bible.
Andy
That’s right.
Daniel
What would you say? Why is that important?
Andy
That’s important because it begins to let God’s word and the priorities of God’s word shape our priorities in prayer, right? In a sense, we hear from God in the word, and then we respond to God in prayer. There should be kind of an ever-increasing connection between what we hear from God and what we cry out to God to do. I think, yes, trying to pray from what we’ve read is a key way to be training our kids and to cultivate our own trust and hope in the Lord.
Daniel
That’s great. It’s good modeling.
Andy
Okay. Singing, third element. I’m guessing a lot of our people might be most hesitant about singing together as a family, right? It feels awkward. We’re insecure about our ability, right? We’re no Mark Celoria (Pastor of Worship), but what advice would you give? What encouragement would you give to our families?
Daniel
Well, I would say that I am not Mark Celoria, and neither is Andy.
Andy
I’m most certainly not.
Daniel
It is awkward, I think. I think it’s good to just acknowledge that, that especially starting out, it’s different. It’s not something that I grew up doing, singing in the house. My recommendation would be to make it simple. Choose songs that are easy to sing, that everyone knows, hymns.
Andy
Hymns. Yeah.
Daniel
There’s a lot of tools that you can use in terms of pull up a YouTube video and sing with that. Sing to recordings that the church has created or different things. I would use every tool at my disposal, but I do think that singing is important. It’s a means of grace that the Lord uses in a unique way to press His truth into our hearts.
Andy
That’s right. That’s right.
Daniel
It’s important.
Andy
It goes deeper. It sticks longer when we sing it, right? I mean, none of us remember the outline of sermons we heard when we were kids, but we can all remember songs that we heard over and over, and sang over and over. God has made it so that singing both expresses our joy and trust in God, and it strengthens and increases our joy and trust in God. Families, I would encourage you to sing together. Dr. Whitney talks about some other things you might do if you have time, catechism, scripture memory, reading other books.
Those are all really good things. I would say don’t over complicate family worship time, though. Those are things you can plug into your day at other spots. If you do family worship after dinner, maybe do a catechism at breakfast or do some scripture memory at bedtime. That’s kind of been some of the ways we’ve done it.
Andy
Reading books, I think that’s something you could do with your kids all the time. Keep family worship simple. It’ll help you be more consistent, which is kind of where he closes. He has three brief reminders. Be brief, be consistent, and be flexible. With that said, Daniel, would you add anything else to this conversation?
Daniel
I think those are great encouragements. Keep it simple and try to do it as much as you can. Don’t give up when you’re a little inconsistent. Just keep at it.
Andy
That’s right. Well, let’s close with this quote from Matthew Henry. “They that pray in the family do well. They that pray and read the scriptures do better, but they that pray and read and sing do best of all.”
May God make us families who read His word, pray to Him, and sing to Him together. Thank you guys for listening. We’ll see you next time.
Outro
Thanks for listening to this episode of the “Gospel Shaped Home Podcast” produced by Providence Baptist Church of Raleigh, North Carolina. For more information and resources from Providence, visit us online at pray.org. If you enjoyed today’s episode, please consider subscribing and leaving a review on Apple Podcasts.