What Is Family Worship?

As Christians, we think of worship as a corporate experience, or also as an individual act (think "quiet times"). Sure, these are both true, but there's another area of worship that, unfortunately, has gone to the wayside for many Christians, especially in Western cultures. I'm talking about family worship, a dedicated time when parents and children devote themselves to reading, singing, teaching, and praying of God's Word together. 

Family worship used to be the norm for Christian families throughout history, but why is it now neglected by so many people in the church today? 

It's hard to say—immediate thoughts of Western "busyness" come to mind—but it's hard to quantify the degree of family worship practice outside of personal experience and anecdotes. Regardless of the "why," I'd rather focus on the "how" when it comes to a robust, fulfilling family worship life. It really boils down to two things: 

• Priorities

• Plan  

When it comes to your priorities and plans for family worship, you really need to take an inventory of your daily and weekly schedule: 

• What are the essentials? 

• What are the supplements? 

• Where does worship fit within all of this? 

• Do you have a plan to focus on prioritizing family worship?

For myself and my family, when we were first married, we used to focus much of our time on working long hours at our respective jobs. (I would work my day job from 8:00am–5:00pm and then be gone at gigs until midnight, while my wife would be at her business for much of the same amount of time.) Most of our other time was spent at church, serving in creative/music/production ministries. What we were doing was good—after all, we were providing for our home and serving our church—but we had very little time dedicated to each other, least of all dedicated time to worship God together in our home. 

This all changed after we found out we were pregnant with our daughter. We were filled with a conviction to shift our priorities, and this led to a plan to incorporate a dedicated approach to prayer and singing before bed every night. After our daughter was born, we added reading a chapter each night from The Biggest Story Bible Storybook (you can buy it here). It's now progressed into reading a daily chapter each morning from Jonathan Gibson's Be Thou My Vision (you can buy it here). 

To say our lives have been enriched and blessed would be an understatement. It was limited at the start of our marriage, but now, family worship has a grown into a time that we look forward to each morning and night, starting and ending the day intentionally savoring God's truths together and strengthening our bond as a family.

The way you conduct family worship doesn't have to look ours—some of our friends do it totally different—but consistency is the key. You'll find that consistent, dedicated time spent together as a family worshipping God affects all other areas in your life, enriching the work you do, the service you give to your church and community, and strengthening your relationship to God and to each other. 

For church leaders, YOU can facilitate family worship, too. Send out your set lists and sermon topics ahead of time, not just to your music/production team, but to your congregation. For instance, a while back, we took part in another family's worship time by reading their church's Sunday scripture, discussing the sermon topic, and playing "drop the needle" with the song list–and it was an amazing and encouraging time.

If you've never practiced something like this, or if you want to strengthen your existing time spent with your family in worship, try some of these ideas—daily liturgies, Bible storybooks, games to get your children engaged, etc. I bet you'll find that your connection to each other grows stronger as you move together into deeper relationship with God.

Be blessed 👊✌️