Obstacles to Family Worship

9. Creation of Sunday School

Instead of giving God a prominent place in our families’ daily lives, it seems that thoughts of God and learning about God have been isolated to only Sundays. As stated earlier, any training in the things of God has been consigned to the responsibility of churches rather than that of parents.

“During the 19th century as Sunday Schools began to be introduced in North America, resistance was encountered . . . Their argument? That as the Sunday school was established, it would result in parental neglect of their responsibility for the spiritual training of their children.”¹

Terry Johnson, in his book on family worship, goes on to say that if the “meetings have caused the neglect of daily family worship then the net spiritual effect of those meetings has been negative.”²

“Protestantism has become all but silent on the issue of family worship, a near-universal practice in the recent past, and replaced it with meetings that take us out of the home and away from the family. Not only have we given up a proven method of transmitting the faith to the next generation, one that has a built-in format for Bible study, prayer, and singing, but we have done so for alternatives that add to our already hectic pace of life and take us away from our spouses, children and neighbors.”³

Can you imagine standing from the pulpit and saying: “Sunday school has had a negative impact on our congregation?”

It would be extremely difficult to remove Sunday school from most of our churches, and with the lack of parents who lead their families in daily family worship, the results could be catastrophic.

However, churches must try to see that Sunday school attendance is not the “end game.”; It can be good, but spiritual growth in the family does need to be a family and parental matter. Churches must train families on what family worship is and emphasize the need for it.

References

1. Terry L. Johnson, The Family Worship Book: A Resource Book for Family Devotions (Fearn, Ross-shire, Great Britain: Christian Focus Publications, 1998), 8.
2. Ibid., 9.
3. James Montgomery Boice et al., Give Praise to God: A Vision for Reforming Worship: Celebrating the Legacy of James Montgomery Boice (Phillipsburg, NJ: P & R Pub., 2003), 335.

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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.