Beyond skinned knees and loose teeth

A third element of Bailey family worship that I wanted to write on is our time of prayer.

Little kids' prayer requests naturally gravitate towards personal, physical needs: skinned knees and loose teeth, etc. There's nothing wrong with that I suppose, but as parents we want to see our children grow up into mature Christians. So it's good if we can enlarge the horizons for prayer beyond themselves, especially beyond their external wants.

For our times of family worship we have daily and weekly prayer items. Daily items include what we read in the Bible that day, a family from church, one member of the Bailey family, one extended family member, one missionary we support, and special requests/needs from others. Once per week we pray for one country of the world using Operation World (a great missions resource).

I have gone back and forth on having the children pray for some of these items. I think it's best to do it, but it can be a little hard to work out.

Good medicine

When times get tough, there's nothing quite like a baby's smile to lift your spirits

Eternity in our children's hearts

This is the second in a series on Bailey family worship through the years.

Last time I touched some on memory work and young children; I'd like to continue on that theme.

We have always mixed catechism and Scripture as both are important for memorization. Catechism gives the big picture summary of revelation (ex: What is God?, What happens when we die?, etc) where Scripture memory provides the actual revelation to them.

Over time we have developed a system of short-term and long-term memory work which we go through each night in family worship and some on Saturdays. The short-term work consists of weekly Bible verses that we all learn (parents set the example!). On Saturday mornings the children recite that week's verse to me individually.

The long-term memory work consists of hymns, creeds/catechism, and Scripture. Over time each child memorizes a couple dozen hymns/psalms (one stanza usually) and we rotate through a couple of these each evening in family worship. Then, depending on which day of the week it is, we also recite together truths that we want our children to always know throughout their life:
Sunday: Psalm 23
Monday: Psalm 121
Tuesday: The Apostles' Creed
Wednesday: 1 Cor 13:4-7
Thursday: 10 commandments
Friday: The Lord's Prayer
Saturday: Heidelberg Catechism Q&A #1

I struggle to find time to keep fresh on the Shorter Catechism work, but most Saturdays I have the children recite all they know to me and we also review a few questions every evening during family worship. One controversial decision I've made is to pay them for their memory work (an idea supported by American puritan Cotton Mather). I pay $1 for each new answer recited from the shorter catechism (word perfect) and $0.25 for each review question answered correctly.

Our belief in all this is that we're laying a foundation in their lives--not with hay that will rot away over time, but with that which will last into eternity.

Books, bathtubs, catechisms, and chairs

This is the start of a new series of posts on how we developed a family worship practice with our children; I plan to start from the very early years and work my way through chronologically. I had planned to do this in Sunday School during our study of the classic book Thoughts on Family Worship, but I don't think we'll get back to that book for a while so I'll give my own thoughts here instead. Also, I don't plan to spend time on the why of family worship; for that, see the book I just mentioned (or Ps 78, Eph 6:1-3, etc).

My earliest memories discipling our children involve books, bathtubs, catechisms, and chairs. I'll take them in that order. Among our favorite books for very young children are The Bible in Pictures for Little Eyes, and the Read-Aloud Bible Stories by Lindvall. The second book is good at not showing images of Christ (the first does, I believe). Kristin may remind me of others and if so I'll add them in the comments section. Also, Kristin has been effective in teaching our children when they're little to sit still and fold their hands when being read to. This has paid dividends in corporate worship.

I'll take the next two together. Bathtubs are a great place for teaching and reviewing memory work with a child (a captive audience). We started with the First Catechism and some basic memory verses. Actually I abbreviate some of the answers in that catechism so that even a 2 year old can show progress. Faith can give the answers to the first three questions. And I try to explain some concepts along the way, too, at their level. "Glorify God" means showing others how good God is, etc.

The last topic for this post is chairs. I remember when the children were very little having them sit in chairs during family worship. At first family worship only lasted for a few minutes and it was really us training them more than a time of the whole family worshipping together. We would line up the dining room chairs in a row and have them sit still while we did catechism, singing, or prayer. As long as we had a consistent time each day to do this, and we got off the sofa, we would see improvement little by little in our children's ability to sit still and participate.

Other points I want to mention in future posts on this series: joy in family worship, singing and music, long-term and short-term memory work, prayer lists, Bible reading, liturgy, Sabbath, missions, guests, and hypocrisy. I look forward to your observations, too.

Caught in the middle

Isaiah is a great little kid. As the middle child, he's the only one who can say he has both an older and a younger sister and brother. He's proving to be a good help during the homeschooling day, keeping Faith occupied so Kristin can teach the others. Here he is giving her basket rides down the hallway.


Isaiah is also a bit of a tender heart. He melts Kristin's heart with out of the blue, yet sincere, statements about how beautiful she is and how much he loves her. The kid's got heart. In this photo I caught him praying after recovering from last week's sickness.

Out of the mouth of babes (proceeds something besides praise)

What can you learn about human nature from a child's first words?

To help answer that, here are the most common expressions from Faith's lexicon:
"What u doin'?"
"Why?"
"Stop that!"
"No!"
"No, I'm not!"
"Mine!"

What we did with it

I'm borrowing a post title from More Water (I think perhaps from last Labor Day) just to say that the highlights of our long weekend were the several times we got together with our local church family. We're a small church, but we're pretty good at community.

I also like these comments from Doug Wilson,

Learning to live in genuine community is one of the central goals that we have set for ourselves. And, to be honest, we did not set the goal—it is set before us in Scripture as one of the basic elements of the Christian faith. We are one in Jesus Christ, and this is not to be limited to Sunday morning when everyone is wearing their best clothes, when pretty much everyone took a shower, and everyone is on their best behavior. This is the place where we are woven into community, but the thing is not supposed to come unraveled as we are pulling out of the parking lot.

But community on Monday morning . . . that’s another thing. And Thursday afternoon can be even more difficult. Because living in community is what takes the rough edges off, but before it takes the rough edges off, living in community reveals those rough edges. Some of you are regularly late to things. Some of you don’t return things that you have borrowed in a timely way. Some of you think that community means other people baby-sitting for you. Some of you think that community means having a right to be a grouch. Some of you think that community means flirting with all the sisters, or with all the brothers as the case may be. Community brings all this out, but community, over time, is also supposed to deal with it.

We are tangled up in one another’s lives, and this is as it ought to be. But we are not tangled up so that we would surrender to various forms of thoughtlessness. Confronting this kind of thing as appropriate, covering it in love as appropriate, is the training ground that God has given to us. We are a rag tag collection of forgiven sinners, and a number of us have some messy things lying about in our lives. The task before us is to pick up, and to help one another do so in all patience.

So patience does not mean leaving it alone. Addressing it firmly does not mean impatience. And learning how to do this is one of God’s great gifts to us.

Ignoring the thinkers

From Ken Myers' recent letter to Mars Hill subscribers: a sobering statement on Christians and their leaders.

I sense a growing level of uncritical identification with contemporary culture; Christians whose experience and assumptions have been shaped only by "culture affirming" institutions.

While there is a number of wonderfully insightful books by Christian authors who see the underlying dynamic of many cultural conventions (books about technology or commodification or narcissism or our addiction to entertainment or the state of modern marriage), the insights of such prophetic thinkers seem to be ignored by celebrated Christian leaders and hence by most Christians. It is easier to keep a big church program running if you don't introduce too much cognitive dissonance between what you say on Sunday and what advertisers and entertainers and professors and miscellaneous experts say the rest of the week.

One way to stop ignoring Christian thinkers is to listen to Mars Hill Audio. They now have a free podcast called Audition. I recommend it; the latest edition is an interesting analysis of the John Roberts' led Supreme Court.

Forgiveness. Nothing is more foreign to sinful human nature.

Our church had a very difficult summer with somewhere around one-third of the congregation leaving. Thankfully, it appears that the storm is over and now we can heal and hopefully learn how to relate to others better. To that end the next book we will study as a church is John MacArthur's The Freedom and Power of Forgiveness.

I finished the book recently and it changed my thinking on whether forgiveness requires repentance first and other foundational relational issues. True to form, you can't argue with MacArthur's arguments since they are so clearly taught in Scripture. He addresses many questions that, if applied, will help us to live in a more grace-saturated, self-denying way.

A powerful summary of the book's message can be downloaded (right click here) in MP3 format. It's an address that Pastor MacArthur gave to students at The Master's College back in 1992.

Pan Relay Races

It's time for another installment of Heroics in Parenting. Isaiah is sick, which brought this one to mind last night.

There is a race known only to parents of small, sick children. This race begins with a shock in the middle of the night. When you went to bed everything seemed fine and you looked forward to an enjoyable, peaceful night of rest. But sometime in the middle of the night a small voice breaks into your consciousness and you hear words like "Daddy, I feel like I'm gonna puke up." These words jar you into a quick reflex and you dash through the dark house (lest you wake other children) to the kitchen. You find a pot or pan (here is where Dad loses time reflecting on where one finds clean pots and pans in the kitchen) and sprint back to the child.

If you're successful you place the pan under the child's mouth in time, if not you scream at the other parent until they drag themselves out of bed and assist. Then dawns the realization that TWO pans are needed and after another dash to the kitchen (this time Dad remembers where pans are kept) the next phase of the course begins. Here is where a one-man relay begins as the parent rushes from child to toilet to sink (must rinse!) and back to the child.

When the first heat of the race is over, at least one parent will probably spend the rest of night in a weary alert status in the bed, poised for the next round to begin, when they again will sprint into action. And there will be no sleeping in the next morning if there are other children in the house. This is one more reason why parenting is for heroes (and it matters which side of the bed you sleep on).

The Young Peacemaker

The Young Peacemaker has been recommended to us by several other families. We just finished going through it as a family and most of us benefited from it. Many of the ideas in the book are probably too much for a child under 7 to grasp, but all of the children learned from the stories and some of the principles. We bought the kit that comes along with the book which contains worksheets and activity pages for each chapter. These are definitely for those who can write and read with good comprehension.

Overall, this is a great resource for a family to use and re-use. We plan to re-read it again next year.

The fun of keeping small children in small places

Time for another installment of "Heroics in Parenting". This one is dedicated to Kristin who so far this week has successfully taken 5 little children to a dentist's office, a doctor's office (you know how small those waiting rooms are), the grocery store, homeschool, and even got them all home after having a flat tire. Except for the flat tire this is a typical week for her, and that's why the world should stop and salute her and others like her.

For a candid (and very funny) glimpse at what shopping is like with several young children, you've got to read this, "LOT OF POKEMON CARDS THAT MY KIDS TRIED TO SNEAK BY ME".

The Reluctant Homeschoolers

We're back into the full swing of homeschooling as of this week. This year we have enrolled a 4th grader, a 2nd grader, and a kindergartener. We expect this to be a difficult year (not a first) with Faith and Zeke to tend to. We thought seriously about sending one or two of the children to a local school but decided that we'd try it for one more year (not a first for that feeling either).

There are some things we love about homeschool: that we get to teach our children some very important things ourselves, that we have control over the curriculum (which means we get to buy lots of books!), that they seem to learn responsibility and maturity better in the home environment, that we can "shelter our children" (oh no!) from many harmful influences. There are some things that we don't like about it: you can become white-washed tombs like in the cartoon, it's hard, there are tendencies to expasperate the children or to let them slide, you wonder if they are missing out in some areas, etc.

I'm thankful for others who have helped us in the past and how God provides new help each year. This year one of the "older ladies" in the church has offered to tutor Eli once a week on a number of weak areas he has; that's a great display of love to us! So if you can take some time to pray for us, we'd appreciate if you'd include a prayer for our schoolyear.

Zeke's Finalization Trip

We spent the week in the drought-stricken state of Alabama. Our main purpose was to finalize Zeke's adoption (Alabama law requires even uncontested adoptions to be finalized in person and in court). We knew what to expect for this one (we had the same courthouse, judge, clerk of court, and lawyer for Faith's finalization) so we took along most of the children as a homeschool field-trip. The judge was not able to be there due to health problems, but the clerk of court was able to make everything official for us. Zeke is now, officially in the government's eyes, a Bailey.

We stayed with Kristin's parents; they were generous and loving as always. For the first time since Zeke was born Kristin and I were able to leave all the kiddos behind and enjoy an outing together. We also were able to visit briefly with my mom.

Traveling went smoothly; the children were well behaved. The most interesting part of the trip for me was being in public as a family in places where no one knows us and they can gawk. We really stand out in airports, malls, and most restaurants. As expected, we got plenty of looks and a couple awkward comments from strangers. Kristin and I are prepared for this and we try to respond graciously or just ignore it. The children are oblivious to it at their age, but I do wonder how we can prepare them for such situations when they become more self-conscious.

It's strange how sitting on an airplane for half a day can just wipe you out, but we're all tired and happy to be home again.

Faith Turns 2

Happy Birthday to Faith! We're off today to Alabama to celebrate with family (and also to finalize Zeke's adoption); these pictures from recent months capture some of the many faces of our hip-hopping, laughing, questioning, fussy, fun youngest daughter.

Why we need to care about theology

Are you unmoved, or somewhat apathetic, when you hear about subjects like sin and grace? I mean, you know these things are great, but they don't seem immediately relevant to your life. I have been that way. Especially when faced with tough people problems, I want to skip the theology-talk and get to the practicals. If you're like me, David Wells is somebody you should make time to read.


His book, No Place for Truth (or whatever happened to Evangelical Theology) is a "wisdom book" that reveals how the modern culture we live in pushes theology to the periphery of our lives instead of the core where it should shape all our thoughts and actions.

This book is now 15 years old, but as Modern Reformation points out, it has stood the test of time and is still a must read. It provides insight on many topics, such as: community, the meaning of work, the entertainment culture, individualism, the values shift from character to personality and from morality to good feelings, the growth of an anti-intellectual and anti-authority church, the problem with pastors as "professionals", and a focus on explaining why theology is for the people of God (not just religious academia).

To summarize his thesis, theology holds the keys to Christian identity, to genuine piety, to the sort of thought that brings the Word of God to bear in our life. But modernity has shifted the focus from God to the self, where now we seek happiness, not righteousness, and God becomes increasingly remote and hence irrelevant to what is most important to us. While items of belief are still confessed, they are being removed from the center of life where they defined what life was, and now they are relegated to the periphery where their power to define what life should be is lost.

For local readers, this book is available for check-out in my church's library.

Man-mountain in the making

Zeke had his 4 month check-up today. He weighed in at over 19 pounds and measured 27 inches. That's 95th percentile in both categories.

My baby can beat up your baby.

Sectarian or Secular?

This series of posts explains quite a bit of the problems within the reformed world, its infighting, and the resultant, increasing number of microdenominations.

The problem: overemphasizing either antithesis or common grace instead of holding them together. Err too much on the side of antithesis and you end up sectarian and in a tiny ghetto. Err too much on the side of common grace and you become just like the world.

The fix: if you're naturally bent towards antithesis (like I am) develop friends who are naturally bent towards common grace, and vice versa.

Eli's new bike

This morning Eli asked me why some of his friends make fun of him because he doesn't know what a gameboy is or who pokemon is. I really haven't answered him yet, but here's what I will say. There's nothing particularly wrong with these things, it's just a matter of what they would displace from his life that matters to us.

One of our top goals as parents is to foster in our children a love of reading. We've centered our homeschooling curriculum around it, we model it in our own lives to the best of our ability, and we pray for it to happen. With Eli it certainly has. Even when he is doing chores, like taking out the trash, he'll often have a finger in a book as he goes about the house.

This summer, as usual, we participated in the city library's reading program. It turns out that Eli was selected as the winner for the city library we frequent. Today he was invited to the civic plaza where he received a nice prize--a new bike. What a great way to reinforce a love of reading, and to make answering his question from this morning easier. We're pretty proud of him.

Go to the byways; they may listen

Two verses from my recent devotions motivated me to renew evangelism with my co-workers. One was from the gospel of Mark where Jesus tells the parable of the king's feast. He makes a statement to the effect, "go out to the byways." We are to go out and initiate with people, inviting them to come to the Kingdom of God. The second verse is from my reading of Jeremiah where God tells Jeremiah to speak again, because "they may listen." I thought, "who knows? Even my co-workers may listen!"

I noticed that a co-worker I've been praying and hoping to speak to about Jesus was reading the atheistic-tract The God Delusion by Dawkins. That was a couple of weeks ago. Since then my prayers have included asking God for an opportunity to talk to him about the Christian faith.

I believe God answered that prayer yesterday when late in the day he and I were the only folks in his office area and we were already talking about some other things. I prayed for courage and not to be ashamed of my Lord, and I spoke. It turns out that another co-worker loaned him the book to read (now I'll pray for a chance to speak to him, too) and he hadn't begun it yet. We had a brief conversation in which nothing dramatic happended. But I feel good that I took the opportunity God gave me to speak. If he decides to read Dawkins' book, perhaps my words will make a difference.