And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. | Deuteronomy 6.6-7
An interesting side-effect of social-distancing and the potential coming ‘shelter at home’ announcement is that they re-orient life on the family unit. Family, which used to be at the center of life, has been pressed into the margins, through our concepts of professionalism, busyness, and entertainment. As a church, we have always tried to elevate the importance of family, even using family as a metaphor for how the church functions: as a family of families. This virus may just end up being a Molotov cocktail thrown into the middle of our rhythms to help us re-structure our lives towards home.
One of the places that I would like to emphasize this is in the practice of family worship. I posted a podcast from a friend this week that walks through arguments, both from the Bible and church history, for making family worship a habit. This priority is echoed in the language of the theology of children at Communion Church which states:
We believe that parents are responsible for the spiritual training of their young and old children. We believe that before God, parents, not churches have the primary responsibility for the spiritual nurture of their children. We believe in partnering with, not replacing, parents in nurturing the faith of children so that, by God’s grace, they will be well equipped to spread a passion for the supremacy of God to the next generation. For that reason, we strongly encourage parental involvement in the classroom and make use of meaningful take-home materials for every lesson to encourage and enable parents to interact with their children over Scripture and the lesson content. There are many for whom Sunday morning is simply a break from the busyness of the week. In response, many churches develop attractive children’s ministries that are little more than glorified day care centers. Nevertheless, many parents assume these ministries will teach their children everything they need to know biblically, thereby abdicating their own responsibility. Our goal is to instruct the students that we might assist, support, and complement what parents should already be doing in the home.
We have structured Communionkids to assist parents in raising kids in the discipline and instruction of the Lord (Ephesians 6:4), not to be a replacement for parental responsibility. As we are directed in Deuteronomy, it is parents who are to teach their children diligently the truth of Scripture. Some apply this verse with a very loose application, looking for moments to pop up that can be used to point to the Creator, and we should definitely do this. There is a reason why we don’t teach math and science and grammar in this disjointed manner: we recognize that it is not effective. Our children need structure and order to learn (as well as application as you walk by the way).
As we take a break from gathering, it presents us with a perfect time to strengthen how we teach our kids the Bible at home. Since we believe that the church (and the pastors specifically) have the responsibility to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ (Ephesians 4:12), we are going to be providing daily lessons* to work through as a family. Each morning (starting Monday) we will post a reading, family questions, memory verse, and coloring page on the church blog. You are free to use as much or as little of this as suits your family, but it will be a good way for our kids to be learning with one another (studying the same thing) as we also strengthen the practice or regular family worship.
Set some time aside each day to walk through the daily lesson, to sing together, pray together, and to read the Bible together. I look forward to hearing how it goes!
*the daily lessons are from the book: Leading Little Ones to God, which is a systematic theology for elementary aged kids. If your kids are older, try working through a catechism.