Obstacles to Family Worship

8. Churches Are Not Emphasizing Family Worship

Even though I have grown up in church and have been in ministry for 22 years, I had never heard of taking family worship this serious or being this consistent with it until studying the subject in seminary. This concept seems to be almost completely forgotten and neglected today. Not only has it been neglected and forgotten by family leaders, but church leaders, as well.

I have never heard family worship taught nor emphasized at any church that I have been involved in. Previous to being in local ministry, I traveled with a parachurch ministry for 15 years and worked with over 30 churches each year. Unfortunately, not in one single church did I ever encounter a teaching, a plan, or an emphasis on family worship.

I am amazed that something that was once considered crucial and foundational, later became peripheral, and now seems to have virtually vanished from our churches.

Parents have completely surrendered the reigns of spiritual development of their children, and sadly the churches have not called on the parents to take them back. Now, the only way that most Christians believe they can be fed spiritually is to enter into a church building on Sunday mornings.

Churches must cast the responsibility back to the individual and the family. Churches must promote family worship and make it common place, once again.

Obstacles to Family Worship:

7. Reliance on the Church Only

Many families have given huge parts of their children’s upbringing to others. Education is now something that the state oversees. Many parents are, for the most part, hands-off in the education of their children. Unfortunately, their children’s spiritual growth is often treated the same way. They have consigned the church to oversee their children’s spiritual education.

Sadly, parents have become people who make money to support a family, but the other roles of education and the things of God are divvied out to others.

The concept of family worship is that the parents, not the church, are the first and primary ones in charge of training a child up in the ways of the Lord.

The church should play a role, but it was never designed to be the only place. The home was the primary training ground long before there was ever a church building.

This home training ground must be reclaimed.

Obstacles to Family Worship

6. Dumbing Down of Christianity

The “Downgrade Controversy” of Charles Spurgeon’s day only seems to have gotten worse. All the precious doctrines of Christianity and all the wealth of the 66 books of the Bible often seems to be thought of as not important. All the details and doctrine of the Christian faith seem to have been reduced to an extreme minimum. So much so that the question becomes: “How small can the core of Christianity become and yet still contain enough information to be considered viable for true faith?”

Dumbing down and reducing Christianity causes believers to become lazy students of God’s Word. Before long, Christians assume they know all there is to know about the Bible even though they have only barely scratched the surface.

Christianity is not just a mystical religion that is based on feelings and the unknown. It does contain faith, but not a blind faith. It is rooted in faith and facts. Christianity does involve the intellect. It is the duty of ministers and parents to teach sound doctrine and the full council of God.

The amount of material that needs to be taught to our children will never be accomplished by one lesson per week in a Sunday School Class. Even two hours in church per week is really only about 20 minutes of actual Bible Study, at best.

Schools would not pass a child to the next level who only spent 20 minutes a week studying a textbook. Yet, for some reason, many Christians believe this is all it takes to learn everything there is to know about Christianity.

Timothy was Paul’s right-hand man. He had been raised with a great knowledge of the Word, yet Paul tells him, “Until I come, devote yourself to the public reading of Scripture, to exhortation, to teaching. . . Practice these things, immerse yourself in them, so that all may see your progress. Keep a close watch on yourself and on the teaching. Persist in this, for by so doing you will save both yourself and your hearers” (1 Tim. 4:13, 15-16).

Learning scripture is no small task. It should not be dumbed down just because ministers or parents have become lazy in the teaching of it.

The Bible remains a large book that requires serious study in order to truly learn its content. Churches and parents must teach the whole Word of God to ensure the well-balanced diet that brings spiritual maturity.

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Obstacles to Family Worship

5. Minimalistic Attitude

The minimalistic attitude that many take at school or the workplace often invades their relationship with God, as well. The attitude is often “What is the least I can do and still be considered a Christian.”

When people begin to get this type of mindset, then Sunday Morning attendance a couple of times each month is all they are out to accomplish. For families who have drifted to this minimalistic attitude of Christianity, daily family worship seems far too extreme, something reserved for a family of missionaries in Pakistan, maybe.

Instead of thinking this way we must, as Peter commanded, “Like newborn infants, long for the pure spiritual milk, that by it you may grow up into salvation” (1 Peter 2:2).

Only by steadily feeding on the Word do we grow into mature believers. Parents must practice this before their children. This daily practice will model for their children what it is to “love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind” (Luke 10:27).

Christian parents should always be striving and pushing forward in Christianity. Parents must exert great effort to keep God first in their personal lives and in the life of their children.

When daily family worship is established in a home, children learn that Christianity is much more than something that they do on Sunday. They witness the importance of making God a priority every day. There is no place better for this lesson to be learned than in the home.

Children are patterning their lives after their parents. When they see mom and/or dad running the Christian race with all their might, it causes them to want to do the same.

Nothing is ever gained by having a minimalistic attitude, and so it is with doctrine and Christian education.