Family Worship: An Introduction

Last year my dad gave each of his children a copy of Don Whitney's Family Worship. It sat on my shelf for a few months and then made its way into my reading stack. 

Whitney has done the church a service in penning this little book. And little it is. At a mere 80 pages of 5x7 goodness, you should be able to read it through in one sitting. Some books of similar dimension are better suited to skimming. But Family Worship gave me cause to stop and evaluate.

This wasn't the first time that I had thought about family worship. We had made attempts in the past but consistency was elusive. Now, as I looked at my own spiritual leadership of my family I was convicted. Part of my problem was having unrealistic expectations. I kind of had this idea in my mind of a perfect "family worship" service. Imagine a mini church service. I also had set unrealistic expectations for what my kids could and could not handle. In one sense, they could handle more than I thought (more on that to come). Finally, I wasn't operating from conviction. In the past, I thought family worship was optional, a kind of add-on for super godly families. Whitney helped me see that consistent family worship should be the norm for all Christian families in the church.

The other motivator for me was that as a pastor, I want to be able to model godly leadership in the home. Family worship is an essential part of leadership in the home. I had some work to do.

The good news is for the last several months we have had regular, simple, uplifting family worship. And I would urge you to look at beginning this vital practice yourself. To that end I want to share some of the things I have learned about leading family worship and offer some practical advice on how you can do the same.

A good place to start would be picking up Donald Whitney's Family Worship. You can find it here. Tomorrow, I will look at selecting a text for family worship. Stay tuned.

Have any thoughts or tips you have found helpful for leading family worship? Let me know in the comments.