Make the Time and Reap the Benefits

One thing that anchors my family every week is the worship gathering with our church family on Sunday. Not only does it anchor us, but it’s also one of our highlights. For us, the Sunday gathering is the culmination of God’s work in our lives throughout the rest of the week as a family.

My wife and I have always wanted our sons to see us worship throughout the week, both as a couple and with them, and to see our home as a small church gathering where we open God’s Word, pray, sing, memorize, and serve. Family worship has evolved from our humble beginnings with one child who would sit while we read to him, through fights breaking out during prayer, to amazing questions and discussions that result from our time with the Lord.

Is every family worship time amazing? No.

Is it frustrating every time? No.

Is it worth it? Yes!

We have seen the fruit of faithfully pursuing Jesus Christ as a family, and it all stems from regular family worship time. Here’s what regular family worship does to the culture of the home.

It Normalizes Spiritual Conversations

When family worship is a regular discipline practiced in the home, everyone becomes accustomed to having spiritual conversations with each other. There is an expectation that the Bible will regularly be opened, Christian songs will be sung, and prayers will be lifted up to God. How amazing would it be if our homes were places where the Word of Christ dwelt among us richly (Col. 3:16, NIV).

In Deuteronomy 6, parents receive instructions on passing on God’s commands to the next generation, and one way it says we do that is to “Impress them on your children” (v. 7a, NIV). To impress means to engrave, which requires consistent repetition. When this happens, it also helps prepare us for unplanned moments in life when we can recall what we learned from God’s Word and reinforce those lessons. This leads to the next way family worship changes the culture of our home. 

It Gives Your Family a Common Foundation

God’s Word is living and active (Heb. 4:12). Listening to and obeying God’s Word is like building our house on the rock (Matt. 7:24–27). When our family is regularly in God’s Word together, hearing from God, we will be able to quickly remind each other of God’s character, truth, and promises. If we want to talk about God’s commands at home, on the go, at bedtime, and as we start our day (Deut. 6:7b), it will only start from a strong foundation.

There are no better words to speak to one another to encourage and equip than the very words of God. If we rely on our own knowledge and wisdom, we will quickly find they are lacking, but if, as a family, we continually remind each other of God’s truth, we will see that it’s his Word that teaches, rebukes, corrects, and trains us for righteousness (2 Tim. 3:16).

It Prepares Our Hearts for Corporate Worship

A phrase you’ll hear in my home and in the homes of many of our church members is that Sunday morning starts on Saturday night. Yes, that means everyone should get to bed at a decent time and have clothes ready, but it also means we must start preparing our hearts so we are ready to hear from the Lord in the morning.

One way this can happen is by including the upcoming sermon passage in your family worship time. Read it, ask questions, discuss it, and be better equipped to hear God’s Word preached the next day. See how the Holy Spirit uses your time at home with his Word to plant his truths even deeper into your hearts during corporate worship, and follow up with more discussion as a family.

It Helps Us Remember What’s Most Important

Recently, I’ve started our family worship time by reminding everyone to “Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things” (Colossians 3:2, NIV). Whether our day has been a good day, a bad day, a boring day, or an exciting day, when we open our Bibles, we get to see what is most important to God. Then we can approach the throne of grace in prayer and lift our voices together in praise of God. There is nothing better for refocusing us on eternal things than to worship together.

How Do We Make This Happen?

The word “regular” is used intentionally because life happens. There are times when people are sick, schedules change, or not everyone in our family can be together at the same time. Missing family worship, though, should be a temporary disruption and not the norm. Look at it this way. Would we want our children to look back on their time in our home as one where we regularly engaged in God’s Word and occasionally missed, or as a place where we didn’t engage with God’s Word regularly and only occasionally spent time in it together? I think we all know the answer, so the question is, how are we making sure it is regular?

1. Start Now

Tell your family that you want to start gathering to read, sing, and pray. It doesn’t need much preparation, just pick a passage, sing a familiar chorus or hymn, and then pray as a family. It could be when everyone gets home, around the table, in the car, or before bed. The important thing is to just start.

2. Keep it Simple 

If you’ve never held a family worship time, don’t do everything at once, and don’t share the full plan for the year with everyone. Just start with the read, sing, and pray model, and over time, you will be able to include other things like study, memorization, service, and more. But remember, consistency is what matters, so be faithful in the simple and trust God to do his work in your hearts.

3. Schedule Tomorrow

Put family worship on the schedule for tomorrow. We know how it goes: if it’s on the schedule, we do it and prioritize it. So make time tomorrow to begin or do it again.

Share the Highlights

After a day, a week, or a month, start asking questions to find out what some of the family’s worship highlights have been. What was something learned? Was there a promise of God that helped someone recently? What song is on repeat in their minds? How has their prayer life changed?

My final encouragement to all parents is this: Be excited about spending time as a family in worship. Don’t see it as a chore or a checklist, but an opportunity to spend time with God and each other. When your children get older and move on, you will never regret a day spent together in the most important spiritual disciplines. Trust that as you do this, God will bless your faithful pursuit of him, and that your children will, in turn, make this a priority in their own family one day because of the faithfulness they saw in their parents.