My parents are Christians. They love the Lord and, as essentially first-generation followers of Jesus, they did a good job of pointing me to Him.
However, an official time of family worship was never a “thing” in our family–I honestly don’t think the thought crossed anyones mind. We did our own things for spiritual growth–Bible reading and private prayer–and we went to church together on Sundays. But we never cracked open the Word together or as a family worshipped outside of church.
Some friends who regularly practice family worship encouraged us to make it a cornerstone of our family as well. I highly recommend A Neglected Grace: Family Worship in the Christian Home by Jason Helopoulos. It was a major encouragement to me and my wife, and Helopoulos clearly spells out the sweet grace of worshipping together, as a family, regularly, and how to do it, practically.
Here’s the usual Shirkman Family Worship routine:
- Sing a selected song or hymn. Our voices are most certainly a joyful noise, but not much else. I normally play guitar and we both sing. Instruments (quality voices or otherwise) are by no means necessary to do this well.
- Prayer for illumination. We pray the Lord would open our eyes and help us know Him more and understand the passage we’re reading.
- Read from the Scriptures. We’ve been making our way through the book of Luke, a chapter or half-chapter at a time. We then discuss the section and ask about things we don’t understand or share thoughts about the passage.
- Pray together. We normally each take a prayer request–for ourselves, our families and friends, coworkers, students we work with, people who are sick, etc.
We basically ripped off the suggestions of our friends and the ideas from A Neglected Grace. Nothing fancy, nothing difficult, just a family worshipping together.
We aren’t perfect about doing this every night. We normally do it just after dinner, before we clean up the dishes so we don’t get distracted. We move from the dining room to the living room because it’s a bit more comfortable. Some days we miss, but it’s always a blessing when we do it. It’s 15 – 20 minutes (perhaps some of the best spent of our day), and it has been a major blessing for us as a family.
When we have guests over for dinner, we like to invite them to take part in it with us, and I hope it has been an encouragement for them too.
My greatest exhortation if you’re considering this as a family is to just start. Give it a shot no matter what stage of life your family is at.