Family Worship



Since Eli can read well enough now, he participates more in family worship. One way is by reading the opening Psalm with me responsively (we alternate reading every 2 verses). Standardizing on one Bible translation within the family avoids confusion.

I'm regularly tweaking the liturgy, currently it looks like this:

• Opening Hymn (first verse only, from memory)
• Opening Psalm (a short one)
• Gloria Patria
• Bible Passage (short reading, lately from Portals of Prayer)
• Meditation on Passage (lately from Portals of Prayer)
• First Catechism , Scripture memory, or Creed
• Missions Moment (from Operation World)
• Prayer requests
• Family Prayer (everyone takes turn praying)
• Lord's Prayer in unison
• Benediction

This takes about 20 minutes and happens between dinner and bath time. Now that I've written it out, I see that a closing hymn would be nice, too. The children especially enjoy the missions moment, where I briefly talk to them about the needs of a different nation each night. In addition to finding that nation on the globe, Eli enjoys showing everyone the nation's flag from a book he bought at a library book sale.

There's still work to be done concerning the Hebrews 12:28 command to worship God with reverence and awe, but the ants-in-the-pants are gradually going away. Also, this is not the primary time for learning new memory work, it's better if that happens other times in the day. This is simply a time of coming together to worship God as a family.