Whatever Became of Family Worship?
Whatever our contemporaries may think about family worship, I believe it’s a vital practice for the health of our families, our churches, and our society. Pastor Jerry Marcellino refers to it as the “Lost Treasure” that needs to be “rediscovered.” I agree that family worship is a lost treasure. But rather than using the word “rediscovered,” I would use word “recovered” or “restored.”6 It’s not enough that we rediscover and admire an old relic from the past. Family worship is a practice that needs to be restored in our homes.
I attended a Christian university along with approximately five-thousand other students, most of whom came from Christian homes. Although I never conducted an official survey, my general impression was that very few of my fellow Christian students had grown up in homes where family worship had been regularly practiced. It seemed to be a foreign concept to most of them. I believe the general ignorance concerning family worship demonstrates just how far Christian families have departed from their Christian heritage.
Family Worship: A Household Word
There was a time in the early days of this nation when family worship was a “household word” (no pun intended). Generally speaking, Christian families understood it to be their duty to conduct in family worship in the home. For example, in 1677 the congregational church of Dorchester, Massachusetts, composed and signed a written covenant in which they pledged to faithfully carry out their Christian duties. Included among their resolutions, they promised
To reform our families, engaging ourselves to a conscientious care to set up and maintain the worship of God in them and to walk in our houses with perfect hearts in a faithful discharge of all domestic duties: educating, instructing, and charging our children and our households to keep the ways of the Lord.1
In like manner, the church in Boston, Massachusetts, whose pastor was the notable Increase Mather, made the following commitment to conduct family worship:
We promise (by the help of Christ) that we will endeavor to walk before God in our houses, with a perfect heart; and that we will uphold the worship of God therein continually, according as he in his word requires, both in respect of prayer and reading the Scriptures, that so the word of Christ may dwell richly in us.2
James Packer is correct when he informs us that “family worship was . . . vitally important [to the Puritans]. Every home should be a church, with the head of the house as its minister. Daily and indeed twice daily, the Puritans recommended, the family as a family should hear the word read, and pray to God.”3
Family Worship: A Forgotten Practice
Unfortunately, this Puritan commitment to family worship slowly weakened. Nearly a century later, Isaac Backus, a Baptist leader, called attention to this decline. Describing the spiritual condition of the land in 1766, he wrote
New England has formerly been a place famous for religion in general, and for Family worship in particular. But of late, the neglect of this, as well as other religious duties, has evidently been growing upon us; which has caused much grief to pious souls. But I have not heard that any discourse has been published upon this subject here these many years…. there have lately been numbers remarkably awakened in some parts of the land, who were trained up in the neglect of Family Prayer, and who are still at a loss about the Scriptural authority for the daily practice thereof.4
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The Second Life of a Christian College in Manhattan Nears Its End
The King’s College is a small school. But as the city’s only high-profile evangelical college committed to “the truths of Christianity and a biblical worldview,” it is more well known than its enrollment numbers — over 600 students before the pandemic, down to roughly half that now — might suggest. Its sudden decline has drawn national attention.
Administrators at The King’s College, a small Christian liberal arts college in Manhattan, have been meeting with students in recent weeks to deliver a grim message: All of you should find someplace else to go to school.
Between the pandemic and a business deal gone bad, the college had struggled for years. But what began as a handful of layoffs in November quickly escalated to a doomsday scenario. Now it appears likely the school will close, and school officials have been going from department to department to show students a list of schools that might accept them as transfer students.
The King’s College is a small school. But as the city’s only high-profile evangelical college committed to “the truths of Christianity and a biblical worldview,” it is more well known than its enrollment numbers — over 600 students before the pandemic, down to roughly half that now — might suggest.
Its sudden decline has drawn national attention.
Most of its students are white, and many come from conservative households far from New York City. For them, King’s has been a pathway to a world beyond their lives back home, where roughly half were home-schooled or attended private, often Christian, academies.
In interviews, most said they hoped to stay in New York and transfer to non-evangelical schools, like Fordham University, Columbia University or the City University of New York. Representatives of the college did not respond to messages seeking comment.
“The one truth I am committed to is biblical truth,” said Matthew Peterson, 19, who said he grew up in a “homogeneous” Christian community in Ohio. “I really wanted to come to New York, where I knew I would be confronted with all sorts of ways of living and belief systems.”
Before the pandemic, the school dreamed of expanding, to give its brand of nondenominational Christianity a secure place in the country’s media and financial capital. But it appears instead to have been undone by a pandemic-related decline in enrollment and revenue. An unsuccessful foray into the world of for-profit online education, meant to help, may have only accelerated the downward spiral.
At a recent meeting, Paul Glader, a journalism professor, told students in his department to do everything they could to secure a spot at another school.
“If I were in your shoes, I would apply to all these schools, I would pray a lot, I would talk to my parents a lot. This is your life,” he said, as two administrators standing nearby nodded in agreement. “That being said, I hope we survive.”
King’s was founded in 1938 and moved campuses twice before it shut down in 1994 during an earlier period of declining enrollment and financial woe. It was revived in 1999 by Campus Crusade for Christ, whose founder, Bill Bright, said he wanted the school to educate two million students within its first decade.
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Finding the Right Hills to Die On: A Book Review
A bulk of the book is dedicated to “performing” theological triage—particularly in the chapters dedicated to second-and-third-rank issues. Drawing on his journey through various theological positions, Ortlund models what it means to define the faith from a posture of humility.
Gavin Ortlund wants to make you a better boxer—or at least help you pick better fights.
He opens his book with an observation about fighting: “It is easy to lose your balance when you’re standing on one foot. The strongest posture is one of balance between both feet: one of poise. That’s why boxers put so much care into their footwork.”[1]
Perhaps no other phrase embodies the task of Ortlund’s Finding the Right Hills to Die On than that of “theological poise,” and because of this, I think this little book needs to be bumped up to the top of your reading list. If it hasn’t come for your church yet, it’s likely on the way: doctrinal division lurks around the corner, and you’d be well-served to equip yourself with theological poise. Ortlund helps us do so.
A Tale of Two Impulses: Sectarianism and Minimalism
Finding the Right Hills to Die On begins with a section discussing the dangers of what Ortlund calls “sectarianism” and “minimalism.” Don’t get caught up in the vocabulary. What is suggested here is simple: doctrine is something we should divide over when appropriate; however, the church’s foundational call is to unity and peace with one another, secured by the blood of Christ. We should avoid both unnecessary division and unnecessary indifference.
Though a wide survey of healthy churches may find strong disagreements, “our love of theology should never exceed our love of real people, and therefore we must learn to love people amid our theological disagreements.”[2] Even in instances where healthy disagreement occurs, we must remember that our primary interlocutors are not flesh and blood but the cosmic powers over this present darkness, as Paul writes in Ephesians 6.
Again, it’s about poise. Avoiding sectarianism and minimalism is not about avoiding disagreements altogether—it’s about understanding when and how we ought to disagree.
But if only some hills are worth dying on, how can we know we’ve chosen the right ones?
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Public Schools Have Lost Over a Million Students. Here’s Where They’re Going.
Rising enrollments in choice schools, particularly in private schools, not only provide evidence of a continuing school-choice wave sweeping the country, but also demonstrate how these learning environments will continue to be an important part of the United States’ educational fabric.
Public schools in the United States have lost over a million students in the past three years, according to the Wall Street Journal. Where these students went, and why they left, says a great deal about the future of American schooling.
Private Christian schools have absorbed many of these students. In the 2022–23 academic year, schools in the Association of Christian Schools International recorded 35 percent higher enrollment than at the start of the pandemic, according to a new ACSI study. Similar kinds of schools have also seen dramatic increases. For the 2021–22 school year, the National Catholic Educational Association reported a 3.8 percent nationwide enrollment increase, the largest in NCEA’s history. Charter-school enrollment increased by 7 percent during the first year of the pandemic and has held steady since, according to the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools. While homeschool “enrollment” doubled during the pandemic, no other form of education saw significant increases — especially not public schools.
Enrollment growth in Christian schools over the past three years reverses the trend in declining enrollment from the preceding years. And it was not just a pandemic-era trend. Attendance at private Christian schools continues to increase even as district public schools have reopened for in-person instruction, while the number of charter-school students and homeschooled students declined in 2022.
Why have private Christian schools benefited in this environment? One explanation is how they responded to students’ learning needs during the pandemic. Public schools that remained the most remote for the longest experienced the greatest enrollment losses, according to an American Enterprise Institute study. Meanwhile, 84 percent of Christian schools returned to in-person instruction “much sooner” than local district schools, according to the ACSI report. Christian schools that reopened earlier have added an average of around 80 students since the start of the pandemic.
Motivated by a desire to serve their families, Christian schools sought creative solutions for getting students back on campus. “Early on, it was clear from seeing our kids struggle emotionally, socially, and academically through distance learning that getting kids back on campus was critical,” said Brian Bell, head of school at Redlands Christian School in southern California. “It required us to be creative and brave with our solutions to get back in person.” Redlands Christian School now educates over 1,400 students, the highest level in its century-long existence.
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