How to Do Family Worship When You Don't Have it All Together

Your Calvinist

Subscribe

Download

Share

00

00:00

Today, I'm joined by the beautiful, the one, the only, Jennifer Foskey, my wife, and we're going to be talking about family worship.

00:08

That's the subject of today on Conversations with a Calvinist, which begins right now.

00:31

Welcome back to Conversations with a Calvinist.

00:33

My name is Keith Foskey, and I am a Calvinist, and as I said in the intro, I am joined today by the ever-wonderful, beautiful, my wife, Jennifer Foskey.

00:41

Jennifer, how are you today? I am excited to be here.

00:45

I'm doing well, thank you.

00:46

All right, and there are three people in the room, so why don't you introduce the third? This is Theodore.

00:53

All right.

00:54

Theodore.

00:55

He's currently 27 weeks pregnant now, so he'll be with us probably mid-September.

01:00

All right, Lord willing, he will go all the way and make it to full term.

01:07

And this is number, I don't know, I lost count.

01:13

This is number six for us.

01:15

This is child number six, all right.

01:17

And what we're going to be talking about today is the subject of family worship, because this is a pretty big topic, and we are certainly not breaking any new ground.

01:28

There are a ton of podcasts out there that have talked about this subject, but what we wanted to talk about was how we do family worship.

01:38

This is basically a ministry to people who are feeling like they don't have it all together, because we want to be honest and say...

01:45

We don't have it all together either.

01:47

No.

01:48

And sometimes people will feel like, well, I don't know if I'm doing enough, or I don't know if I'm doing it right.

01:54

And often I think people have sort of a Puritan picture in their mind, where everyone is sitting around the dinner table, and all the little boys are in their nice shirts, and all the little girls are in their nice dresses, and the father is opening his King James Bible, and everyone is sitting perfectly at the dinner table, having this wonderful time of perfect family worship.

02:15

When was the last time that happened like that for us? It's never happened like that for us.

02:20

I'd say like a week from never.

02:21

Yeah.

02:21

That was about how long ago it was.

02:24

And yet at the same time, I would say that over the years, our family worship has gotten, I would have to say better, in the sense of the kids now expect it if we get to the end of the day, if we get to bedtime, and the routine of tooth brushing, and bath time, and all of those things.

02:50

If we get to that time in the day, and we have not done family worship, then what do we expect? They will ask us, and say, Daddy, let's do Mommy, let's do family worship.

03:03

Yeah.

03:03

And that's really the goal that we had set, was we wanted it to become such a normal part of our children's lives, that when we did not participate in it, and there are days, I mean there are days when we, like I'll give a good example would be last week.

03:21

Last week is our karate camp, which for many of you who are listeners know, I teach karate at our church.

03:29

We have a karate program.

03:31

And our karate camp program lasted a week, and we were gone every day.

03:36

And so we would come home in the evening, we would be slap tired, we would be exhausted.

03:40

The kids would be exhausted, because they were doing the camp all day long.

03:43

And so I would say last week, we probably did family worship less frequently than normal.

03:52

And honestly, if we were being honest with the audience, how often do you think we do family worship? Because some families do it every single night, some families do it twice a week, some families do it on the Lord's Day, and on one or two other days.

04:11

What is our frequency, would you say? I would say probably at least five days a week.

04:17

So it's not every night, but just about every night.

04:21

So last week, when we did not have family worship to our children, that was odd.

04:25

And we still did it a couple of the nights, but we didn't do it every night.

04:30

So before we go any further, I do want to take a step back, because we're talking, we're just having a conversation about family worship, but there are people who probably don't even know what it is that we're talking about.

04:41

I mentioned the Puritan model, and a lot of people that we know do practice family worship.

04:47

But not everybody who listened to this program is probably practicing family worship, and some of them probably don't even know what it is.

04:54

So very quickly, let's just go through sort of what we mean by family worship, and from a historic perspective, what that term has meant.

05:03

This is where the parents, particularly the father, exercising his role as pastor in the home, if the father is in the home, obviously, if the father's died or something, this would be the mother who would be doing this.

05:17

But the father exercising that role as pastor in the home is taking the children and the wife, putting them under the reading of the word, and likely with some form of exercise explanation as well, because as we know, when we read the word, the kids have questions.

05:39

In doing so, he is also fulfilling the Ephesians 5 command, which is to wash his wife with the water of the word.

05:48

So he's giving her the word, he's answering her questions, he's doing what the Bible says in 1 Corinthians 14, where it says if a woman has a question, she should ask her husband at home.

05:59

So it's giving the opportunity for the husband to exercise his role as pastor within the home, as shepherd, maybe is the better word, of the home, and I wouldn't say every home does it the same, but it's centered around the word.

06:17

And so when we say worship, it's not so much like a church service, even though I'm sure there are people out there that model their family worship after church service, but it's an opportunity at one point in the day, or whatever day it's being done, to be focused on the word of God as a family, showing that this is the center of why we do everything that we do, this is our life, this is who we are, we are Christians, this is what we do as Christians, is we gather around the word, and if you have children who are not yet believers, you're pointing them to the gospel, pointing them to Jesus Christ.

06:55

And so that's what we mean.

06:57

Do you have any other additional thoughts on that? No, I think over time it's changed for us, I think, where, I mean, it's always been centered around the word, but sometimes we've added music, and sometimes we've brought in, to make it more fun, some musical instruments the kids would play, you know, the guitar, play guitar, or ten flute, or, you know, extra things to incorporate that into it, as well as prayer, and we do pray, but it is centered around the word, and also catechism.

07:32

We've used catechism, particularly the New City Catechism, the one our homeschool group has.

07:38

Yeah, and if you look at our children, as we noted earlier, we have six children, two of our children we adopted, so, and that was in 2006, and we, they were, it was Ashley and Cody until 2012 when we had Hope, and during that six-year period, I would say we did family worship very infrequently.

08:02

In fact, it probably wasn't as big a part of our life then as it became after we had Hope, and really after J.J.

08:10

and Pickle, it's become more a part of our life in the last several years than it was in the early years, and part of that is because of just plain not knowing, and that's where I say a lot of people today probably never even heard the term, right? I hope that if you're listening to this now, no matter what state, if you've never heard of this or never thought about this, I hope you can pick up some of the things that we're saying and say, yeah, we can start that, because it doesn't require, you don't have to have, to be a pastor or have a theological degree, I mean, you just have to be a family that loves Jesus, a dad that is willing to take, you know, what the Bible says, like in Deuteronomy chapter 6, you know, where it says, you know, you should be teaching the word at home, you know, when you rise, when you go to bed, throughout the day, you know, the scripture should be on your mind, and I think family worship helps gather the family together and kind of fleshes that out.

09:08

Yeah, absolutely, and like I said, if you're not currently doing it, we're not shaming you because we didn't do it consistently, I mean, I know that there were, you know, we read the Bible with Ashley and Cody, we prayed with Ashley and Cody, but they didn't, they never came to us like our younger kids have come to us and said, you know, Daddy, Mommy, when are we doing family worship? Because it was not consistent, and so I think we can be honest and say we were not as consistent with our older children, and we're thankful that God has moved on our hearts to be more consistent with our younger children, and yet at the same time, we do mourn, in a sense, you know, the fact that we didn't, we weren't as consistent, and this is no excuse, but I was a young pastor, you were a young mother, we were new to everything, and so we would, you know, we didn't even start homeschooling until Ashley and Cody, Ashley went into middle school.

10:04

And that was probably 2010, 2011? Yeah, and so these were things that we grew into as we began to see the value of them, as people came into our life who did these things, like, you know, the Artesonis and other people who were homeschoolers who were successful, and we saw successful homeschoolers, and so we said, hey, we can do that, right? And that's part of what I want this to be, is sort of an encouragement, hey, you can do this, just like what you just said, you don't have to have a theological degree to do this, you don't have to be a doctor of ministry to do this.

10:41

Honestly, most of the questions that your children ask you are fundamental questions, some of them are difficult, but they are questions that probably you yourself have had, and so if your child asks you a question that you are not comfortable with, or not comfortable answering, I think it's okay to tell your child, let's look that up together.

11:07

Have you ever had to do that? Have you ever had to? Yes, several times I've had to do that.

11:14

I'm trying to just think off the top of my head, but I've had, particularly with JJ, he has come, he's sick, he's almost seven years old, but many times he'll come to me with questions, you know, well, why did Jesus die on the cross, or what would have happened? Did he have to die on the cross? I remember that was one.

11:36

Yeah, did he have to die? Yeah.

11:38

Why do we trust the Bible? Who wrote the Bible? Where did the Bible come from? How did we get it? All right, stop with just those four questions.

11:45

Those are four questions that honestly most Christians should know how to answer, but a lot of Christians don't, and doing family worship, hearing your children ask you, why do we trust the Bible? Being able to give your child more than just, we do because we do, or, you know, have faith in faith, or something like that, but to actually have a reasoned response, or have to go and find a reasoned response, have to consider a reasoned response to these questions, this is a benefit to you as the parent, and you get this on double shot, because you're a homeschool mom, and you're the wife of a minister, but you're a homeschool mom, and we do family worship, so you're getting these questions, because tell them about Bible and breakfast, that's different, that doesn't include me.

12:41

Well, we follow Christ Church in Moscow, has a same page summer program that they're doing now, and then through the year they read through the Bible together, and it's probably about 100,000 people, I mean it's all around the world.

12:54

So it's not just the church in Moscow, it's an app that anybody can get on.

12:59

Yes, a U version has a, I subscribe there, and it's, over the summer it's about four chapters a day through the New Testament, and then they do usually two chapters of Psalms and Proverbs, so you're going through, over the summer it's the entire New Testament and the Proverbs and Psalms, so I gather them in the morning, and gather through breakfast and I pray with them, and then we, a combination of listening to someone, you know, the U version read the Bible, and me reading the Bible, I like them to hear my voice, and then we talk about passages, talk about it together.

13:35

Okay, and the reason why I said I'm not included in that is because I'm normally working.

13:40

You're working.

13:40

Yeah, so I get up and go and begin, whether it's sermon prep, or whether it's lesson prep, or whether I'm preparing to go teach, like I do on Thursdays, it's set free, all of these things are things that I'm doing, so I'm not able to be with you for Bible and Breakfast, but you as a homeschool mom, you're able to do this, and we know not every mom is able to.

13:57

Not every mom is a homeschool mom.

13:59

Not every, you know, not every listener is in the same condition, but that provides bookends for the day where the child, our children are hearing the Word of God in the morning, and our children are hearing the Word of God in the evening, and therefore the day is bookended with the Word of God, and then the week begins with worship.

14:23

We have Sunday morning, which, tell them about a couple weeks ago when we missed church, and this is, it was sad but funny.

14:33

You had to miss church.

14:35

Yeah, I had to miss church.

14:37

Our son was running a fever, and I sent the girls with Keith and with Ashley, and I had J.J.

14:44

with me, and we were watching it on the live stream, and he saw that, well, number one, he missed Sunday school, and he was so upset that he had missed Sunday school.

14:53

He loves Miss Cindy.

14:54

He loves Miss Cindy and Miss Holly.

14:56

They do a wonderful job teaching the class, and then he noticed during the announcements that we had a fellowship meal afterwards, and he hung his head low, and he was close to tears, and said, I love to talk to people and eat the food after church, and we're missing it today.

15:14

He was just upset, because watching it on the live stream is not the same as, definitely not a substitute for being there.

15:22

Absolutely, and this should be, and again, just a shout out to all parents, a thought, you know, it should be an odd thing for a child to miss church.

15:34

If you're a Christian home, and you're a Christian family, the question on Sunday morning should never be, hey, are we going to church today? That's right.

15:41

It should be, hey, it's Sunday, we're going to church, and if we're not, something's wrong.

15:47

Either somebody's sick, or we're out of, even if you're out of town, you know, when we go out of town, we go and we worship somewhere, right, and in fact, that's one of the most joyful things for me, because I'm on a scouting mission.

15:59

I'm learning, I'm like, what do they do here? Oh, look at their bulletins.

16:02

This looks nice, and we have to do this, you know, I love to go in and be like a secret shopper, because I get to sit in, and I'm always, I mean, I'm worshiping, of course, but I'm also, you know, looking at how other churches greet their visitors, how other churches, you know, do the ministry of the gospel, and singing, and fellowship, and the preaching of the word, and, you know, I only get to go away a couple times a year, so it's wonderful to get to do that.

16:37

So yeah, we've gotten a little off topic, but, so worship is a, worship is something that we believe should be a natural part of our children's life.

16:51

It should begin our week, it should be a part of the middle of the week, because we do have middle week worship, which is, you know, we have it at Sovereign Grace, we also have a young disciples group that meets at Sovereign Grace, and we would say worship should be a part of every other day.

17:13

So it's not just, you know, Sunday Christianity, or Sunday Wednesday Christianity, but it's an everyday Christianity, it's an everyday faith.

17:23

To add one more caveat to that, you know, we've been working on trying to open our home more to people, so that they see it not just, I guess, compartmentalized, maybe that's the word, where it's like, well we see these people, these are our Sunday friends, and these are And those people we see at church, but they've never been in our home.

17:41

That's right.

17:41

So we want people to be in our home, because we want to be with the people, we want to love our church people, our family, this is our ministry family, but also because we believe it's a good thing to teach our children, to teach our children how to be hospitable, you know, to teach our children how to fellowship.

18:03

And like you said, JJ, he doesn't have to be taught, he has his mother's gift, and no, this is your, you are a wonderful, you have a wonderful spirit in regard to meeting new people and getting to know people and loving people, that's very much a gift that God has given you, and I see that in him, he, you know, I'm missing talking to people, I'm missing fellowshipping, I want to be there, and part of that I'm sure is, you know, his genetic link to you, but I think also is part of that, he has seen that, he has seen that practiced in your life.

18:44

He sees you being a person who loves other people, and wants to get to know people, wants to be in their lives, and so he wants to meet people and get to know people, and you know, and he is a watcher, you know, he watches me do things, and Daddy, I want to do that, I want to do man work, you know, so yeah, remember the one time Brother Mike Collier was here pressure washing, and he was pressure washing the steeple, he was up on top of the building pressure washing the steeple, and JJ was looking at him like he was an angel, you know, and I walk outside, and I said, what are you looking at, son, and he goes, man work, Daddy, that's man work, and so having the church family is such a big part of all of this, and when we have people over, there are times where we invite them to participate in family worship with us, you know, and we invite them to come in and, you know, sit in and listen to the word, sit in and ask questions, sit in and sing with us, and we do have the benefit of, I do play an instrument, so, you know, when we sing, I get to play guitar, but as you said earlier, we invite the kids, and that is the least musical, they are not trained, this is not Juilliard, this is Callahan, but it does create a desire to participate, you know, they're not just sitting there listening to Daddy play the guitar, but now they feel like they're in part of what we're doing, especially Faith Pickle, she will go and get her guitar, she'll walk out, she'll hold her guitar, now her guitar is missing strings, it's not, it is desperately out of tune, but she crawls up on the chair beside me, she puts it in position, holds it the way I'm holding it, and she simulates doing what I'm doing, and at that, in that moment, she is, she is participating in this activity of family worship, and we're praising God, and we say, what do you want to sing, you know? Same way with Hope, I always have called her, my nickname for her is my songbird, because she has a beautiful voice, she gets that from her dad, he sings very well too, but I like, I mean, she'll grab her microphone, and she'll sing, she'll participate, she's right there, now she is able to sing in tune.

21:24

No, she sings great, yeah, and JJ wants to, you know, play the drums, or he wants to play the flute, or he wants to participate, and sometimes the participation is just coming and sitting up against us, like I said, we're not sitting around the dinner table, which is fine, if you find that the dinner table works for you, and a lot of people it does, because they say, you know what, before we clean off the table, we're going to have family worship, everybody's gathered, everybody's seated, everybody's calm, we've just filled our bellies, now let's fill our souls.

21:58

We have done it that way too.

21:59

Yeah, and there's, again, nothing wrong with that, but for us, the picture would be more, dinner's over, the kids have brushed their teeth, the kids have had their showers, you know, we've hosed them down.

22:14

We've cleaned up the kitchen.

22:16

Yeah, everything, so now there's some serenity, and we can say, okay, it's time for family worship, and they gather around our feet, now sometimes they'll crawl into our lap, sometimes the kids will bunch up onto you, and you get, you know, you've got the belly, with the, you know, you've got Theodore in the middle, and one on each side, and so at that moment, you become, you know, very intimate with it, and so in that sense, it's sort of less like church, even though at church we do sit with each other, but it's more like, you know, I'm not able to be with you, yeah, and so that's part of what I'm saying, is we're not saying do everything at home that you do at church, right, like I would say there are some things that you do at church that probably shouldn't be done at home.

23:17

I'm one that believes that people shouldn't take communion in the home.

23:23

Now this might lead to another podcast, because somebody may send the question, well, why do you think that? I'll give you the very brief answer.

23:28

I do believe that communion is something that is to be done within the body of Christ, that the local church, communion is a practice that's not for individuals, I think it's for the body.

23:42

We read about, you know, the discerning of the body, and these things in 1 Corinthians 11, and therefore, when we're having family worship, we're not doing family communion.

23:50

We don't have family communion.

23:52

This was a big issue, real quick, this was a big issue during COVID, because people were saying, well, can we do communion through the screen? And I would say, I would say that that's not a good idea, but go ahead, you were going to.

24:02

Just to chime in, our children are not professed believers anyway, so we wouldn't participate in that.

24:09

And let's talk about that for a minute too, because there are those in the Presbyterian side, those who we would obviously have some differences with, who would say that we are being inconsistent, because we are worshiping with our children, and our children are not believers, and our children are not Christian, therefore, we're not being consistent, because their argument is that because their children are part of the covenant, they believe that the covenant is something that they are born into as a child of a believer, that they are now, they are part of the church, part of the covenant, therefore, they are able to worship as Christians, even though they're not yet believers.

24:53

And we would say, no, and we would say that they are not, they're not part of the covenant, they're not part of the church yet, we believe they will be by faith, and that's the only reason or way that they will be.

25:05

But we are still instructing them and doing the mandate of bringing them up in the fear and admonition of the Lord.

25:14

So, I don't believe we're being inconsistent at all by doing what God has commanded us to do.

25:20

I don't either.

25:21

I think we trust, we're bringing them up in the faith, and we trust that God will save them according to his will and his time, but that's not something that we can know when that will be or just declare it right now.

25:37

I mean...

25:37

Yeah, we can't say that God is obligated to save our children because they're our children.

25:44

And that's the thing that I think is a struggle for me in regard to the whole covenant family, covenant promises, these things that are held within the Presbyterian view, and that is that these children have a certain promise because they are born into a Christian family.

25:59

1 Corinthians does tell us that they are sanctified because they are in a Christian family or they have a believing parent, but it also says an unbelieving spouse is sanctified.

26:11

But the unbelieving spouse is not a believer.

26:15

The unbelieving spouse, in my opinion, is not a member of the covenant.

26:22

So, again, I know you and I have some pretty strong feelings about this, so I don't want to derail the conversation.

26:29

I certainly don't want to ostracize any of our Presbyterian listeners.

26:33

Maybe we have a few.

26:35

And we love you.

26:36

But there is a distinction.

26:38

We would say we are raising our children in the fear and admonition of the Lord with the hope and the confidence that God is the one who chooses to save.

26:48

God chooses the means by which he saves.

26:50

He chooses the methods.

26:52

Our goal is to proclaim the gospel to our children and to teach our children what it looks like to be a worshiper.

27:02

That's right.

27:03

And we train our children to sit in church with us since they were little babies because we want them to be part of the church in that way.

27:11

We teach them at home to point them towards Christ.

27:14

We take them to multiple church services per week.

27:19

The whole goal of that is for them to...

27:24

God will do what he wills to save them, but we want to train them in that way.

27:29

I'm glad you mentioned that.

27:30

In fact, you went where I was going to go.

27:33

See? Of one mind.

27:35

All right.

27:35

High five.

27:36

Okay.

27:38

Because I think that family worship is a byproduct of family integrated worship.

27:47

And for those of you who don't know, we practice family integrated worship at Sovereign Grace Family Church.

27:54

What that means is that we do not have a time in our service wherein we separate the adults from the children and the children go into one place and the adults go into another place.

28:09

I'll tell you.

28:10

It's so funny.

28:11

I got to tell a quick story.

28:13

Recently, I watched a debate between Andy Stanley and Jeff Durbin.

28:18

And it was on the subject of whether or not we should unhitch the Old Testament from the church.

28:23

The debate didn't have anything to do with what this anecdote was.

28:29

During the debate, it was on the Unbelievable Radio program.

28:34

Andy Stanley was talking to Jeff Durbin as they were debating.

28:38

And he said, I don't know how you're able to preach an hour-long sermon.

28:43

This is Andy Stanley talking to Jeff Durbin.

28:45

He said, I don't know how you're able to preach an hour-long sermon.

28:48

He said, your services must be so long.

28:50

I don't know how you're able to get your volunteers who serve your children's ministries to be able to tolerate that long of a service.

29:01

Now, I'm paraphrasing, but that's basically what he said.

29:03

He said, I don't know how you can preach an hour-long sermon and do all the other things you do in the service.

29:07

I mean, we went to Jeff Durbin's church.

29:09

We worshiped there.

29:10

It was a two-hour service.

29:11

It started at four o'clock.

29:12

It wasn't done until around six o'clock.

29:14

And they had a 15-minute time of just meet and greet in the middle of the service.

29:18

They stopped the service, and everybody walked around greeting one another and loving one another.

29:22

We loved that.

29:23

We thought it was great.

29:25

But the thing that got me was Jeff didn't even respond because it wasn't the subject of the debate.

29:29

But Jeff's response could have been, we don't have children's ministries.

29:32

We don't have volunteers who are going out and watching other people's children because those children are in the service with us.

29:41

I mean, I know when we were there, that was all the kids were there.

29:46

Some families had little infants.

29:47

Some had babies and stuff.

29:50

And at Sovereign Grace, we practice family-integrated worship, which gives birth to the family worship that happens in the home.

29:59

Because that's the natural outgrowth is if your children are sitting with you in worship, which was the model for millennium until the last 50 years when the youth group model exploded and families started to say they couldn't worship their kids anymore and their kids had to be shipped off to these children's churches.

30:25

The model was you had dad, mom, and the kids.

30:28

And the kids got out of line, dad took the child out, got them in line, brought them back into church.

30:33

That was tough for you, too, because you didn't have me.

30:37

Very thankful for my older children at the time.

30:41

They were helpful in that.

30:43

Yeah, absolutely.

30:45

And I would say this to a person, maybe a person who wants to visit our church and maybe who does have children and thinks, well, my child's going to be loud, it's going to be difficult.

30:59

We get it.

31:00

There's not very many people in this church who haven't gone through that same thing, who haven't had to deal with their child being the one who was a little disturbing or a little loud.

31:10

And we get that and it's no big deal, right? We understand that that's going to happen.

31:16

We do hope that if the child becomes really disruptive, that parent would take them out and have a talk with them or whatever.

31:23

But you calm them down, bring them back in.

31:24

You've had to do that with all three of ours, all three of our littles.

31:30

Ashley and Cody came to us when they were already four and six.

31:33

So we really didn't have that issue with them.

31:35

But you had to do that with...

31:36

Particularly two and three is very hard.

31:38

Very active at those ages.

31:40

But I can remember even on times where maybe I didn't have Cody or Ashley and I had the littles, I call them my littles, were with me, I would grab another teenager or another mom.

31:51

Yeah, people want to help.

31:55

I've seen Hope sitting with the wards or with the buds.

32:00

Yeah.

32:01

And it's like, hey, praise the Lord.

32:02

Hope's there.

32:03

That means JJ's probably getting a spanking.

32:07

If Hope is alone, JJ is somewhere else in this building getting his what for.

32:17

And to get him in line, to get him back to where he can come in and sit quietly.

32:26

It's so funny in our world because a child can sit quietly and watch YouTube for hours.

32:32

A child can sit quietly in a movie theater and watch a movie for hours.

32:37

A child can sit at a video game for hours.

32:42

And yet, when we say, okay, we're going to come into the worship service, and our worship service lasts an hour and 45 minutes at least.

32:48

We start at 1030.

32:49

We don't end until 1215.

32:52

So that's 1030, 1130 is an hour.

32:54

Yeah, it's an hour and 45 minutes.

32:55

So our services last an hour and 45 minutes.

32:58

And we say, you know what? That is a lot.

33:00

That's a lot for an adult to sit through.

33:02

It's a lot for a child to sit through.

33:03

We understand there's going to be times where children make a little noise and things like that.

33:06

But if we are doing family worship at home, and we are teaching these things at home, then these things become better practiced in the church.

33:21

And vice versa.

33:22

If we're doing this at church, when we gather to worship in the home, these things become a better practice there as well.

33:28

That's right.

33:29

Yeah.

33:30

And don't be discouraged too.

33:31

I mean, at first, I mean, maybe when they were two and three, maybe we would last 30 minutes.

33:37

Well, then maybe next time 40 minutes or 50.

33:40

I mean, I remember cheering and being super excited the first time we made it through the service with all of them.

33:47

So sometimes they can just take work, but don't be discouraged.

33:51

Yeah.

33:52

And we're fixing to start all over.

33:54

And there is no telling what we got coming.

33:57

I mean, this is number six.

33:59

This one could be all knees and elbows.

34:04

And the hardest part for us is you've sort of done this, like I said, almost kind of like a single mom, because I can't abandon the pulpit to come down and help you, even though there have been times where I have from the pulpit said, hope, stop.

34:18

And I remember seeing everybody in the church like looking and I'm like, I'm going to get onto my child.

34:25

If I see my child acting up, even if I'm in the pulpit, because I'm not sitting with my wife.

34:30

So I've said, hope, stop that.

34:32

Or JJ, stop that.

34:35

And I think people appreciate that.

34:37

I don't think anybody's ever been offended by me getting onto my children, but you are there without other people.

34:44

So I would say to a person who is going to a church that's family integrated, and maybe you are a single parent, maybe you're in that situation, don't automatically feel like you're alone.

34:54

There are people who will help you.

34:55

Like you said, we've had the buds, the wards, you know, other folks who have come alongside.

34:59

We've, you know, we have the benefit of my dad and mom or dad and stepmom rather being members of the church.

35:06

And, you know, they can, the kids can sit with them sometimes.

35:08

So there's all kinds of things that if we think about it and think through it, and when I say be creative, I don't mean, you know, be super pragmatist, but be creative in how we approach worship.

35:23

One of the things you do on Sunday morning in worship is the bag.

35:30

Tell them about the bag.

35:31

I call it my survival kit.

35:34

And did somebody else give you this idea or was it something that you just sort of came up with? A couple of moms gave me an idea.

35:40

And I have drawing pads, crayons, colored pencils.

35:45

I have the fidget, I have fidget spinner and the little puppet.

35:50

I mean, quiet, things that are quiet.

35:53

And sometimes they just need to hold something or have something in their hands.

35:58

But now that they're getting older, I, sometimes I don't even pull anything out of the bag.

36:03

They can sit and listen for the whole hour.

36:05

But that's a curve, right? That's a learning curve.

36:08

It starts with, okay, you know, like Miss Holly is so sweet.

36:11

She prints out coloring pages.

36:13

We have colored crayons that are on the Northex table.

36:17

So when people come into worship, we've got the bulletin, which I tell you, when I was a kid, you know, Pat started bringing me to this church when I was eight years old.

36:25

And I used to love the fact that the bulletin didn't have anything on the back because I would draw, I would take two or three bulletins and I would sit in my seat and you know this, I can sit and listen while drawing.

36:35

And I was still listening to everything that was going on, but I had to be doing something with my hands.

36:39

I was just a young child and fidgety and I would draw for the whole hour, however long the service lasted.

36:47

And so we found that that was very helpful with our own kids, having the worship bag or the survival bag.

36:54

And they do listen, you know, we'll ask them after.

36:56

What did daddy preach about? They might not be able to tell you everything, but they know.

37:03

And that's the question I often ask.

37:05

And this is, this may be helpful for somebody listening, you know, how do you, after worship, how do you, you know, the military talks about when you come back from a mission, you have to go through debriefing.

37:18

And so I sort of like look at after worship, sort of doing a little debrief with the kids, you know, and you know what I'm talking about.

37:26

We get in the car and I say, okay, what did daddy preach about? Sometimes they know the, you know, we were in Genesis today.

37:34

You were talking about Joseph today, or you were, you know, today was the day, the adoption of Ephraim Manasseh, you know, these are things that they may, they're not going to probably remember the outline of the sermon.

37:47

They're probably not going to remember a huge part of the content of the sermon.

37:51

But they remember those things.

37:54

And, you know, maybe ask them what songs did we sing? Do you remember what we sang? Who did you talk to today? Who did you interact with? Who did you fellowship with? And these are just sort of ways to, because next week they know they're going to get asked again.

38:07

So, you know, these are good, good ways to just get them involved in what they're doing.

38:12

You're not just here to, you're not just here to fill an hour and 45 minutes on a Sunday.

38:19

We're here to participate.

38:20

We're here to be part of this church.

38:22

And so that's what we want our kids to feel like they're being made part of the church.

38:27

Go ahead.

38:27

You want to? No, I was just going to, you actually said what I was about to say.

38:32

We want them to feel like they're a part, that it's not just, they're not just spectators or they're not.

38:38

They're not just coming here with us.

38:41

They're coming here to participate and learn and by God's grace in his merciful timing, come to faith and where this will become more than just something they exercise on an intellectual level, but something that they're able to exercise on a spiritual level as well.

39:00

Right.

39:00

And you hear about churches that have, I'm not knocking all programs that, you know, where they color, maybe they're in a Sunday school room and they're coloring Noah's Ark or they're doing something, you know, but our kids through your preaching, you know, expository preaching, I mean, they're sitting through entire chapters.

39:20

Like we've been three years through the book of Genesis.

39:23

I mean, they're learning who the patriarchs are, who all of these people are, how they all fit together.

39:31

And then, I mean, it's amazing.

39:34

They have a much broader picture of the Bible as a whole.

39:36

I pray that that just works on their heart.

39:39

Yeah, absolutely.

39:40

And that's the goal, right? Our ultimate goal in all of this is that, like you said, they learn the word, they are, when they become, when they come to the point where they can recognize their own sin, they know who to turn to.

39:57

When they have the feeling of recognition of their guilt before God and their brokenness and their sin, they know who the Savior is.

40:08

Now, it may be that, and this is maybe a topic for another time, but there may be moments in their life where they're sort of in flux and they're like, they're saying we believe in, you know, they're kind of confused a little bit.

40:26

Like all of our children would say they believe in Jesus.

40:28

They would all say they love Jesus.

40:29

But the question that we have is not whether or not they say they love Jesus or say they believe in Jesus.

40:34

The question we have is the question of whether or not they've been born again.

40:37

That's right.

40:37

Have they been born again? And that is, we're looking for fruit of repentance.

40:43

We're looking for things that would indicate a brokenness over sin and a recognition of a need for a Savior.

40:50

And like when people ask me, well, how do I know it's, how do I know my child is ready to be baptized? Well, those are the first things, right? That we're looking for a recognition of how Christ has changed their life, that they've gone from being a child of wrath to a child of God.

41:07

And that may happen at a young age.

41:10

I mean, we're not saying it can't happen, you know, that a child can't experience that.

41:15

I'm always reminded of D.L.

41:17

Moody, who, he went to a church, preached an evangelistic crusade, came back to his home church, and they said, well, how did it go? And he said, it was wonderful.

41:27

We had two and a half salvations.

41:30

And they said, two and a half, what is that? Two adults and a child? He said, no, it was two children and one adult.

41:35

He said, because the two children have their whole life now to live for Christ.

41:39

And the adult only has half their life to live for Christ.

41:41

So a child who is saved young has their whole life to live for Christ.

41:48

But at the same time, I don't think that we should automatically assume that our children are believers because they're our children, or because they affirm all of the things that we say.

41:58

Because children have a natural tendency to want to please their parents, at least at a young age.

42:04

You know, if at their adolescent age, that age where they don't want to please us anymore, if they're still trusting in the same Jesus that we trusted, there's a good indication that they've had a genuine conversion, if they're still loving the Lord when the world has tried to twist their mind and all of those things.

42:24

But this is, like I said, the subject of today.

42:27

And as we begin to draw to a close, the subject of today has been family worship, but really more than that, it's been worshiping with the family.

42:35

Because we've talked about worship at home.

42:38

We've talked about worship at church.

42:40

We've even talked about worship around the breakfast table.

42:45

And really, the one thing that we would say as, you know, having been in the ministry now together as pastor and the wife of a for, wow, coming up on, I guess this is 16 years.

43:03

2006 was when I came here to be the pastor, to be pastor of what was then Forest Christian.

43:11

You know, in that, in those years, in that, in those 16 years, you know, we certainly have seen a lot of growth in our life and we're not, and we've not arrived.

43:19

We're not saying to anybody that we're the example, do what we do.

43:23

Please don't do what, you know, don't look to us.

43:27

But at the same time, we can say that we can look back over a period of that many years and say, okay, we have learned from other people, whether it was people in the homeschool community, whether it was people in the church, whether it was people from other churches.

43:44

You know, I mean, we've even learned things by listening to guys like, like Jeff Durbin.

43:49

And I've got some books from, on family worship that have helped me.

43:54

Odie Bauckham obviously has had a big, big influence.

43:59

There was a book you were looking at earlier.

44:00

We, we keep it out on the Narthex table.

44:03

That's on family worship.

44:05

And it's, that's from chapel library, which is a ministry that produces a ton of good literature.

44:12

If people want to know where they can get good, solid literature, especially good gospel tracks and good books to give away, chapel library, look that up.

44:22

And that's where the book on family worship comes from.

44:24

And we hand those books out to people.

44:25

We say, take, please take one and use this as a resource.

44:30

And so let's say, let's, let's for a moment, as we begin to draw to a close, let's talk about this.

44:36

What if there, somebody's, somebody's listening, never had family worship, never done anything like this.

44:43

They think this is a good idea, but they don't know where to begin.

44:46

What, what's what's our advice? Well, now days that I've done that I've led, had to leave family worship for whatever reason, I do not, I do not play any instruments.

45:01

I do not have that gift, but I will look up music, you know, like music that we sing in church usually on YouTube.

45:10

And I will, you know, play a song to have, to have that.

45:13

So if that's kind of, if you're coming thinking, well, I don't have a guitar or I don't play that.

45:17

That's not really, you don't have to have that or do that.

45:20

Yeah.

45:21

And we would just, you just gave me an idea before I forget, we would promote groups within the church, such as Seeds Family Worship, Seeds Family Worship.

45:32

That's what it's called, right? Seeds Family Worship.

45:34

They have songs that are specifically designed to teach children scripture and they have, they have hand signals and things like that.

45:44

It's like, I mean, not that you want to do VBS at home, but it's, you could have your own little VBS program at home.

45:50

You could use these videos.

45:51

They all are scripture.

45:53

It's nothing but scripture songs.

45:55

You know, our kids know Matthew 28, 19 and Ephesians.

46:01

What was it? The Ephesians passage.

46:03

I remember that.

46:04

Yeah.

46:04

They know the Ephesians 6.

46:06

So they know these passages because they've sang these passages.

46:11

So Seeds Family Worship, Shane and Shane has a lot of good music with the words if your kids are old enough to read.

46:19

But I'm thinking specifically to kids, slugs and bugs, slugs and bugs.

46:24

Now, not all of their songs are church songs.

46:26

Some of their songs are just, you know, just fun songs.

46:30

But if you go to slugs and bugs and look it up, it's obviously a Christian organization because they promote a lot of biblical songs and their fruit of the spirit song is fun.

46:40

A lot of their songs.

46:42

Micah 6.8.

46:43

The Micah 6.8 song is great.

46:45

I've thought about incorporating that into our regular church worship because it does such a good job of memorizing, you know, to what is it? To love, love, mercy.

47:03

See, I say memorize it and here I am.

47:07

To walk humbly, you know, was it love, do justice, love mercy and walk justly, walk humbly before our God.

47:15

These are the but this is built into a song and the kids, you know, kids sing it.

47:21

And I'll never forget seeing JJ walk across the living room floor and I'm just sitting there in my chair reading something on my computer.

47:29

And JJ walks by and he's singing a worship song, not prompted or forced, but it's in his DNA because we have reinforced that.

47:41

And that's what we're saying.

47:43

Family worship does that.

47:44

Family worship reinforces that.

47:46

And I remember one time that, and if you don't know where in the Bible to start, a good place I think would be the Proverbs.

47:54

You know, you could read a proverb that matches like with the day.

47:57

Absolutely.

47:58

There are 31 Proverbs.

48:00

You can read one a day for a month and you can read it over and over.

48:05

That leads to a lot of really good conversations.

48:07

Yeah.

48:08

The sluggard.

48:09

Yeah.

48:09

31 chapters.

48:10

I said 31 Proverbs or 31 chapters.

48:12

Some of them has a lot of Proverbs, but it's the 31 chapters.

48:16

Yeah.

48:16

JJ loves to talk about the sluggard.

48:18

Brother Andy was preaching about the slugger and the slugger.

48:22

Yeah.

48:22

The slugger, because he said the mom of the 11th commandment, thou shall not be a sluggard.

48:28

And that's great.

48:30

So we have, these are just, again, we're giving you these things as thoughts begin with.

48:37

If all you did was the next time your family was gathered, if all you did was say, Hey guys, let's listen to this song and let's read this scripture.

48:47

That's right.

48:48

And, and, and sometimes that's all we're able to do because we're, we're either tired or we've had a long day or the kids are, kids are exhausted.

48:55

We've had a, you know, but we still want it.

48:57

Okay.

48:57

We're going to listen to this song or we're going to sing this song.

49:01

We're going to read this scripture.

49:03

We're going to pray, you know, because it should be centered around the word.

49:08

The song is focused on the word.

49:10

The scripture of course is the word.

49:13

And then in your prayer, whatever scripture you have read, try to incorporate that scripture into your prayer.

49:20

And then you're, you're, you're, you're saturating your children with the word of God.

49:27

Just try to start with this and then just try to build from there and just try to be consistent with it and then watch what, what happens.

49:36

Yeah, exactly.

49:37

And, and, and to be clear, we are not telling you that you have to do this to be saved.

49:42

We are not being, you know, legalistic and saying if you, if a family doesn't do family worship every night of the week, then you're sinning against God.

49:50

That's, that's not the point.

49:52

The point of, of this whole conversation was we have seen the benefits.

49:57

We want to share those with others because one, God deserves to be worshiped and, and, and God honors that.

50:06

And we've seen that we've seen the, the, we, we reap some of the benefits of that, seeing it in our, in the, in the lives of our own children.

50:14

And, and we believe that you can too, you know, whoever the listener is, you know, can, can have that same benefit.

50:20

Maybe you're a grandparent that's listening to this.

50:23

I mean, there's no reason why when they're in your home that maybe you could do that.

50:27

That's right.

50:29

That's right.

50:29

Play a song, read a scripture.

50:32

If you don't know the answer to the questions, you know, look it up.

50:41

A couple of good website, gotquestions.org is a wonderful website.

50:47

They're, they're, you know, Ligonier and Grace to you and other places have their question and answer sections on their websites.

50:54

And you could email conversations.

50:57

I would say you can send an email to Calvinistpodcastatgmail.com because I love to answer questions.

51:04

That's my whole life.

51:05

So, so if you have a question or you would like for Jennifer and I to do another episode talking about family worship or anything like this, if you want to ask a question that we could dive a little deeper on, then please do that.

51:21

Send us an email.

51:24

Calvinistpodcastatgmail.com is the email address.

51:27

And Jennifer, I want to thank you for one, putting up with me for coming up on our 23rd anniversary on October, on August 1st.

51:39

We met October 26th.

51:41

That's our 25th meet-a-versary.

51:44

Yeah.

51:45

We met on October the 26th and our 23rd wedding anniversary is coming up in just a little over a month and looking forward to celebrate that and celebrating that with you.

51:57

Well, everybody, I want to thank you again for listening today to Conversations with a Calvinist.

52:01

And as always, my name is Keith Foskey and I've been your Calvinist.

52:05

May God bless you.