I intend to write a longer post at some point, or a series of posts, but I want to submit some ideas today about the practice of daily family worship. I've also created a couple other posts you can use to springboard off from this one.

My simple goal is to exhort you to take responsibility for the spiritual growth and development of your own family. Sadly, many families, and especially husbands and fathers, have neglected this duty and responsibility. It's now possible in some churches to take your family to church, send your children to different classes, and then separate as a husband and wife, one going to one adult class and the other to another. Then, families reunite after worship, having studied different topics in different classes. Many families consider this to be their Christian duty for the week, and the bible (or God, or Jesus) is rarely mentioned in their homes the rest of the week.

Now, I am criticizing the offering of classes. But classess--whether together as a family bible class or separate, divided by ages--must be seen as supplementary to what happens at home. In the scenario above, the biggest problem is the lack of attention paid to spiritual growth in the household. As I said a couple weeks back in a sermon, it is not good enough to think that what you receive on Sunday is enough to get you through the week.

One way to solve this problem is to have a regular time of family worship, where your family gathers around the Word of God, reads together from the bible, learns the meaning of the bible for their lives, and prays together. Some recommend doing this daily, and I agree. In my own experience, a daily practice of family worship keeps us centered on the importance of it in our lives and family. If we miss a day, or skip a day (for whatever reason), we feel that something has been missing.

If possible, this family worship should be led by the husband or father. Clearly, this is still something you can do even if you don't have children. The husband can lead his wife in family worship. If there is no husband, or the husband is an unbeliever, the mother should seek to lead her own children in this way to build them up in their faith. The husband or father (or leader) should find some system of reading through the bible that he is comfortable with, say, a chapter each day, or some other unit. I recommend reading continuously through entire books of the bible instead of jumping around. If the leader reads the passage ahead of time, he can create a series of questions, or a brief summary, that he can use to help his family learn. Prayer requests can be gathered, and a theme from the bible passage can be added to be prayed for. Then, prayer can be said, and the time for family worship is over. It takes our family about 15 minutes each day.

I encourage you to begin the practice of daily family worship. If you have any questions about the value of it, or how to do this, please let me know. I'd be more than happy to help you. You can contact me through my contact page, or at jeremyhoover AT gmail dot com (via email).
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In this 4 minute audio, I look at 1 Timothy 5 and explain how you cannot adequately serve and love others if you have not first loved and served your own family.
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Do you read the bible each day? Do you read and discuss the bible with your family? In this audio, drawing from Deuteronomy 6, I challenge us to grow closer to God by beginning a daily time of bible reading and reflection in our families.
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We are exhorted to treat and view others as though they were members of our family (1 Timothy 5:1-2). When we do this, we overcome selfishness in order to serve.
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Peter Lovenheim, In the Neighborhood (Perigree, 2010).
ISBN 9780399535710

In Luke 10, after sending the 72 out on an evangelistic mission, Jesus teaches about neighborly conduct. In Jesus' understanding, being a neighbor is, or at least opens the door for, the mission.

Yet, we often would like to take the evangelistic mission without the charge to be a neighbor. After all, does it really matter? If we preach or teach and the person makes a decision, isn't that enough? But it was this mindset that Jesus challenged when he taught about being a neighbor. When we seek to justify our behavior we have missed Jesus' mission. Being a neighbor means being proactive and involved--the Samaritan used his time, resources, and money to help someone who, under different circumstances, would have been an enemy. We are encouraged to go and do the same.

Peter Lovenheim wrote an interesting book called In the Neighborhood. After hearing about a neighborhood family involved in a tragedy (a murder-suicide while the children were still in the house), he realized that he did not know the family and that likely no one in the neighborhood did. This realization set him upon a goal of creating a community within the neighborhood he lived in, to enable and help physical neighbors become real neighbors to each other.

The book is very enjoyable and a quick read. Lovenheim sought to learn more about his neighbors by spending more time with them, even including sleeping over at their homes! As he began to meet his neighbors more he began to become aware of needs and he was able to make neighborly introductions between neighbors.

One neighbor he met had cancer. He realized that to be a neighbor to her he was going to have to help her. One chapter is devoted to this quest. In that chapter, he states that "the real measure of success of my whole effort [to neighborize the neighborhood] would be if someone who previously did not know Patti...woud join me in helping her out. If that could happen...we would have a real community" (204). Thanks to Lovenheim's work, it did happen. Patti and several other neighbors connected and Patti did not have to struggle alone.

I really enjoyed this book. It left me with several ideas I am thinking through:
  • Being a neighbor to others is hard work. It takes time and sacrifice to get to really know someone. We cannot be real neighbors to people we see simply on a casual basis. (Wake-up call to churches here--if we spend only an hour a week with each other, and most of that in passive listening, how are we being a neighbor to each other?)
  • It takes dedication and persistence. Once we have sacrificed time and made a real effort to get to know someone, it takes time and effort to maintain the relationship! Sometimes, we may have to call a neighbor whose mail appears to be piling up. We may need to finish mowing our yard and then spend another hour at an elderly neighbor's mowing hers. This is what we're called to when we embark on a goal of being a neighbor to others.
  • It is more than merely "being nice." We are not a neighbor to someone simply because we say "hi" when we're both out collecting our mail. Being a neighbor is a mindset; we need to be thinking and acting neighborly to actually be one.
Lovenheim concluded his book with a statement from someone else. It's a fitting ending to this post:

"If we all cared about our neighbors, we could change the world one street at a time" (236).

Let us go and do likewise.
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