In this brief series of posts, I am exploring some resources for family worship, after the compelling weekend our church recently enjoyed with Dr. Don Whitney and his teaching on family worship.
In singing, we ought to have a few goals, I think. On one level, we want to try and sing songs that are related to the truths we are discussing. With my children right now, we studied a story about worshiping God over idols, so we sang My God Is So Big. On Monday night in family worship, we talked about God punishing sin and looked to Jesus. Jesus Loves Me seemed appropriate. So, we want to let God’s Word dictate our singing.
Having said that, though, there ought to be some further goals. We should help our children know deep, rich, God-honoring hymns. I think the story is told of Spurgeon. The story goes something like this: His father offered him a nickel for every Isaac Watts hymn he could memorize. This nearly broke his father, but years later, Spurgeon would confess that he learned his theology from Watts. We ought to make it our aim to expose our children to the amazing hymns that are available to us. Cyberhymnal is an amazing resource to this end.
There are also some contemporary music possibilities like Seeds Family Worship, which seeks to help children remember God’s Word in musical formats. Sovereign Grace Ministries has done 2 kids projects: To Be Like Jesus and Awesome God. Our church usually does a VBS that has music as well. These are all possibilities for training children to make a joyful noise to the Lord.
Let’s worship God in our families by reading God’s Word, praying and SINGING!