Family worship, part 1

Family worship, which seems to have been a fairly neglected practice in recent decades, appears to be making something of a comeback. As more and more Christians watch the speedy erosion of our Biblical heritage with dismay, there does appear to be a greater appetite and recognition in some circles of the urgent need to give children a solid Biblical foundation for life. Anecdotally, I have heard many Christians say that they never practiced family worship—in fact, it never even crossed their mind to do it—but of late they have become convicted and convinced that this is the right and necessary thing to do.

In this two-part series, I want to look first at what the Bible says about family worship, taking a brief look at the elements that family worship might contain, and then look at the importance of fathers opening the Scriptures and explaining the Word of God to their children. In the second part, I hope to address some of the more practical issues, questions, and challenges that may arise. My aim in these pieces is to encourage fathers to take up the challenge of giving their children a solid Biblical foundation for life.

Perhaps the first question that might arise when approaching this subject is this: Does the Bible ever command family worship? The answer to this appears to me to be both yes and no. Taking the negative first, advocates for family worship often cite Deuteronomy 6:7 and Ephesians 6:4 as proof texts for God having commanded the practice. However, neither command actually specifically tells you that you need to set aside a period of time during the day, where you get together as a family and formally worship God.

Listen to Deuteronomy 6:6-7:

And these words that I command you today shall be in 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 up.

What you notice from this is not that the Israelites were commanded to teach their children at one particular point in each day when the whole family was gathered and that was it for the day, but rather they were commanded to teach them all the day long. The whole point was that the hearers—fathers in particular—should strive to inculcate a love for God and for His commandments, not just for 20 minutes or so in the morning or evening, but rather constantly. To my mind, neither the Deuteronomy passage nor the Ephesians passage appear to me to be commanding family worship, as we might normally think of it, but are much, much broader in their scope.

That being said, it is just about impossible to think of a way of keeping these commands without setting aside a specific period of time each day for getting together as a family. This doesn’t mean that this is all that you do—as I said above, the Deuteronomy and Ephesians passages include much more than “family worship”—but I think it would be difficult to obey these commands if you neglected to have a time of family worship altogether.

So if in the context of Deuteronomy 6:7 and Ephesians 6:4 family worship is clearly a desirable thing, the next question is what does it involve? Well, since God hasn’t specifically commanded family worship, as such it follows that neither has He specifically prescribed how you ought to conduct family worship. In other words, He has very much left the details up to each individual family.

Having said this, there are some basic elements that can be derived from the Scriptures as a whole that will clearly play some part in family worship. If we are to teach the laws of God diligently to our children, family worship will obviously include the reading of Scripture. Not only this, but given that children are probably not going to understand a great deal if we just read the Scriptures to them, it will also include explaining the Scriptures.

In addition to reading and explaining, if we understand that we have broken God’s laws and fall short of the command in Deuteronomy 6:5 to “love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength,” then family worship will also include confession of sin and, of course, prayer in general. Singing is another element that ought to find a place as well, since the Bible is clear that this is a God-ordained way of teaching and admonishing one another (Colossians 3:16), and of expressing the joy we should have (James 5:13).

Drilling down a little further, how should the reading of Scriptures and teaching be done? I often hear families say that their family worship takes the form of the father reading a commentary or daily devotional to his family and then praying. While this is clearly better than doing nothing, it seems to me that it misses the thrust of what God is calling fathers to do.

The commands to teach the laws of God to your children and to bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord necessitates having a good understanding of the Scriptures. In other words, fathers and husbands in particular are called upon to study God’s Word so that they may be able to answer questions raised by their family (see 1 Corinthians 14:35). So while reading a good commentary may be fine up to a point, it seems to me that what God is really looking for is for fathers to know the Scriptures, to understand them as much as they are able, and to teach them to their family. If this does not convince, ask yourselves this: What do you think that a child is most likely to respond to—a father reading out the words of others, or a father who is seeking to read, understand, and explain the Scriptures in his own words? Imagine if you went to church and your minister just read from a commentary every week! It is unlikely that you would receive it heartily, no matter how good the commentator.

I anticipate an objection, though, which will run something like this: “Look, I’m not a theologian, and I don’t understand many passages of Scripture myself. How in the world can I sit down and teach them to my children?” Well, with a few exceptions, we are all pretty much in the same boat. But viewed in the right light, you can turn this completely on its head, and instead of seeing this as a great barrier, you can come to see at least three great opportunities presenting themselves.

First, taking the decision to close the commentary and go through the Scriptures yourself forces you to think and to study the Bible more than you ever did before. When my first child was quite young, and I was still fairly new to the Christian faith, I began using Matthew Henry’s commentary on the whole Bible in our family worship. But it quickly became obvious to me that, excellent commentary though this is, the whole process of simply reading out what another man had written was rather dry and not that beneficial to anyone.

So I decided to close the commentary, use it for the reference book that it was intended to be, and to start going through the Scriptures myself. This was quite daunting at first, especially for a relatively new convert; but as I did this, what do you think happened? I was suddenly forced to start thinking much more about passages and how they fit within the Biblical framework as a whole, than I had previously done. This in turn meant that I began to grow in understanding (I hope), and as a consequence so did my family (again, I hope).

Secondly, there is the opportunity to talk. I can honestly say that I have learned more from reading a passage, expositing it as best I can, and then talking it over with my family than I would have done had I simply read a commentary. Children ask questions—hard questions sometimes. But rather than seeing this as a reason to leave the teaching to someone else, why not see it as a great opportunity to test our thinking, to seek answers to their questions and to our own, and through that process, grow together as a family in the knowledge of God?

Thirdly, there is the opportunity to show that we really don’t know everything. We might think that not understanding a passage or a verse is going to show our limitations in front of our children, and this may well be the case. But hey, this is a good thing, not a bad. What do you think will earn the respect of children most—a father who just reads a commentary and never discusses the hard bits with his children, or a father who goes through the Scriptures himself and, when he gets to a hard bit says, “I’m sorry folks, I haven’t the faintest idea what this means. What do you think?”

Let me end this first part by simply exhorting fathers out there: No matter how theologically capable you are, get out the Bible, sit around with your family and do your best through God’s grace to go through a book. Do your best to explain it, talk it through with your wife and children, go away and research those bits you don’t understand. In so doing, you will bless your family immensely.

Rob Slane lives with his wife and five home-educated children in Salisbury, England. He is the author of The God Reality: A Critique of Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion, contributes to the Canadian magazine, Reformed Perspective, and blogs on cultural issues from a Biblical perspective atwww.theblogmire.com.