God can use the small act of faithfulness in gathering your family together to pray or sing or read His Word for His great ends. There will always be more that you want to do with your family worship time. But by starting small and incrementally building and by adjusting your plans as needed you can ensure that your family keeps up the habit of growing in the knowledge and love of the Lord together.

When I was a single college student, I operated under the assumption that family worship is simple to implement and execute. I expected to find the “perfect formula” soon after I was married and then spend the rest of my life executing that perfect plan. How wrong I was. I am sure for some people, implementing family worship is easy and straightforward. But I would wager for most people, even though you have a desire to start and continue regular family worship, you find that it is easier said than done. This can quickly become discouraging if you don’t remember that family worship is typically incremental and iterative.
Incremental: Little Victories Build to Bigger Victories
What do I mean by incremental? Oftentimes, your family worship will not start with a long, complicated liturgy right off the bat. There are a dozen different things you can do with your time: Bible reading, catechism memorization, hymn singing, prayer for your local Church, and on and on the list goes. If you try to do too much all at once, the habit of worshiping together as a family each day actually becomes more difficult to nurture. There is a lot you could do with your family worship time. The question is what is most realistic, spiritually edifying, and glorifying to God way to spend the time that you have.
If you want to start worshiping God together as a family on a consistent basis, start small. Focus on one or two activities primarily, like reading a chapter of the Bible together and then singing a hymn. Your family worship time does not need to become a daily mini-Church service right away. In fact, biting off more than you can chew with family worship is, in my opinion, one of the main reasons so many families with good intentions end up giving up on it. Start small and build up as you go.
Read More
Related Posts:

What we need as a church is people who are free to hang out with other believers. We need people who are able to speak about Jesus in the ordinary everyday bits of life. We need people whose hands are not full of lots of formal ministry but whose timetables are free and flexible to simply read the Bible and chat with people about Jesus. Who are free to read some books with people and then meet up to chew them over. It sounds like a non-job, but it is really quite important.

In areas like mine, there are not a right lot of Christians about. We are in the middle of a majority Muslim area of town and in a town that is not replete with Christians at any rate. Which means what we are most interested in here is not attracting Christians who aren’t here, but reaching the lost with the gospel.
Knowing that we are seeking to reach the lost, we must also think how we will reach them. It may come as a surprise to some, but unbelievers don’t tend to just wander into churches on Sunday. If we’re going to reach the lost in our community, we’re going to have to either go to them or create the kind of spaces they will want to come into.
One of the ways we do that is by meeting needs. So, we provide things like English Classes and a Food Club as a place for people to come in. There is a need and we are happy to meet it in order to put ourselves in contact with unbelievers. We similarly create other spaces, like our Dialogue Evening, where we can meet with local Muslims and discuss the differences of our faith. Again, these are means of creating the kind of spaces – that do not typically exist in our town – where Christians and Muslims, believer and unbeliever, can spend time together.
It similarly means that we have to think carefully about how we will disciple people in the faith. Most of our members do not come from well taught, brilliant Christian backgrounds.
Read More
Related Posts:

Genuine Reformed catholicity…appreciates the wider tradition and heritage of Christian churches both past and present. It acknowledges both the areas in which Reformed Christians agree with various historic Christian traditions and areas in which the Reformed are distinct. True Reformed catholicity is committed to robustly expressing the beauty of Reformed worship, piety, and theology as well as winsomely engaging and working with those outside of Reformed churches.

Numerous elders have attempted to explain the current moment in our beloved PCA family. TE Derek Radney recently offered his own assessment attempting to explain the reason for the differences and tense discussions within the PCA of late.
His essay was published on the SemperRef collaborative.1 Radney identifies the trouble in the PCA not as one in which doctrine is disputed, but rather how the two sides “handle difference relationally.”
Radney winsomely counsels that both sides need to learn to
“stay connected to each other amidst our differences and to remain in the struggle with charity and humility that seeks to understand and learn before critiquing.”
Radney explains further, urging all sides in the PCA to ask:
“Do our words accurately represent the positions of our opponents? Do our words assign motives to our opponents?”
On the surface Radney presents a beautiful way forward for a less fractious Assembly and life together as the PCA.
But as one reads his essay, it becomes clear Radney not only has ignored his own counsel, but uses his counsel as a club to beat those with whom he disagrees in the PCA.
I. Identifying the Parties
Radney seems to identify the two major groups in the PCA as what he describes as the “Reformed Catholics” and the “Reformed Fundamentalists.” The group with whom he affiliates is the former. Everything wrong in the PCA apparently comes from the “Fundamentalist” portion of the PCA and everything good, beautiful, winsome, and hopeful seems to be expressed in the “Reformed Catholic” portion of the PCA.
Radney asserts:
“Reformed Fundamentalists hold Reformed distinctives in such a way that they cannot stand to stay connected to others relationally amidst disagreement of almost any kind. Rather than humble curiosity that slowly seeks to gain understanding about difference, distrust grows, motives are assigned to others, and many, if not all, disagreements are treated as matters of orthodoxy. This posture involves constant suspicion of outsiders and regularly seeks to purge insiders who appear to be compromisers.”
But he’s not finished describing his brothers in the PCA:
“The posture lacks generosity and charity through its inability to listen well such that others are really heard and understood. More basically, it lacks humility because this radical suspicion of others is absent in regard to one’s own motives or possible ignorance.”
In contrast to these “Reformed Fundamentalists,” are the “Reformed Catholics,” who are the only hope of a “beautiful future ahead” for the PCA. Radney characterizes “Reformed Catholicity” as
…a posture of curiosity, charity, critical appreciation, and cooperation grounded in and faithful to Reformed distinctives.
That’s quite a contrast. I certainly wouldn’t want to be one of those mean, ignorant, suspicious, proud, fearful “Fundamentalists.”
“Fundamentalist,” however, is an odd way to describe Reformed people given that “fundamentalism” in Christianity is more typically associated with folks who “don’t smoke, drink or chew, or run with girls who do.”….
….Radney acknowledges he’s not using the term “fundamentalism” in a “strict historical sense.” But on the other hand, Radney recently did assert he sees one of the major challenges of the PCA is how many are stuck in last century’s crisis (presumably the Fundamentalist-Modernist controversy):
Recent cautions from Jon Payne about excessive alcohol consumption and his calls for pastoral piety when contrasted with the statements in the National Partnership documents cited above might, I suppose, lead the uninitiated to conclude one side of the PCA is a bunch of “Teetotaling Fundies” and the other takes care to “SCHEDULE YOUR DRINKING” during General Assembly. But that seems a bit of a stretch and not very nuanced.
II. Projection and the PCA
My seminary education at RTS Jackson didn’t have much training in psychology, but I can recognize psychological projection when I see it (I did, after all, watch a few Frasier episodes back in the day).
What is “psychological projection?” Britannica defines it as, “the mental process by which people attribute to others what is in their own minds.”
While Radney warns us all not to misrepresent the positions of our opponents and not assign motives to them, he does exactly that. First he describes his opponents with a pejorative “fundamentalist” label. But then he goes further.
He asserts his opponents are dominated by “relational anxiety,” grounded in “pride,” and motivated by a fear of “losing control” over the denomination. And – he asserts – that is the reason they are opposed to what he calls “the presence of difference.”
It’s hard to believe the author of those allegations is the one who also – in the very same article – cautions about assigning motives. Is it acceptable to assign motives if one does so in the spirit of “Reformed Catholicity?”
But Radney turns from psychoanalysis to spiritual analysis. Even going so far as to suggest those with whom he disagrees at best have no confidence in Jesus:
“If we have confidence in Jesus, the presence of difference will not throw us into combat mode (at least not right away), nor will it lead us to distance ourselves from other Christians over our differences in fear of a slippery slope.”
And at worst do not even know the gospel:
“Rather than being filled with pride and fear, the good news of Jesus can fill us with humility and hope. Because we are saved by grace alone, we have nothing to boast about and no ground to stand on to exalt ourselves above others.”
Shockingly it is Radney’s opponents whom he accuses of trying to exalt themselves above others. Even as he as the audacity to imply their lack of acquaintance with Christ is the reason for their “Fundamentalist posture.”
Read More
Related Posts: