I know what y’all are thinking, young kids and family worship sounds like a recipe for disaster. Honestly, sometimes, it is. For us, it can be more like a circus.
However, the season for family worship with young kids is temporary. Eventually, they grow older and stop acting like crazy people. It amazes me how much you have to teach kids to be humans. Anyway, I want to help you ease into this discipline of family worship and encourage you that it’s okay when your family worship time turns into a straight dumpster fire.
Young kids are unpredictable and needy, but if you start this discipline at a young age, they’ll get the idea soon! Plus, it’ll eventually become a sweeet and memorable time with your family.
Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God.
Colossians 3:16
FAMILY WORSHIP INCLUDES
Let me give you some tips to encourage you to do family worship time with your young family! First, let’s discuss what family worship includes:
Reading scripture
Prayer
Singing
That’s it y’all. This is usually all my people can handle anyway, but these are the foundational practices you need to have family worship.
OUR FAMILY WORSHIP
Family worship with young kids will not be this long and drawn out worship service. More than likely it’ll be like, ten minutes.
For my family, we do family worship about 2-3 times a week and I can guarantee you it doesn’t go past 10 minutes. Of course, as they get older you can make this time longer! This is coming from a husband and wife who NEVER did family worship growing up. We’re still totally in the learning process. All the grace people. All the grace.
Let’s dig into the few tips that have worked for us and we’re praying that it works for your family too!
“We could summarize the views of our Christian heroes across the centuries with a sentence from Jonathan Edwards: “Every Christian family ought to be as it were a little church.”
Donald Whitney
SCRIPTURE TIPS
Have the family repeat
I think it’s the most adorable thing to hear young kids try to say big bible words or try to repeat a verse in general. Even though they will not understand, they can practice the discipline of hearing and memorizing scripture. That in itself is so valuable.
Pick a easy to memorize verse
Now, I don’t mean to never read a long passage of scripture, but maybe within that passage pick one verse that they can repeat and get stuck in their little minds.
Maybe it’s been a super long day and you’re both exhausted, then go ahead and just pick one verse and that’ll be enough!
Hold a physical copy of a Bible
Y’all, for us with busy homes, it’s so easy for us to pick up our phones and read from our Bibles. I am in no way discouraging this because sometimes that’s all you have in the moment. However, keep a Bible in a drawer or on a table near where you do your family worship time. This way, it’s near and it’s always there for you, ready when you need it.
Kids need to see what you’re reading from, I’ll admit that we’re not the greatest at this, BUT we can keep each other accountable, right?
PRAYER TIPS
Teaching them posture
I think I forget this all too often. When we are praying we must be considering our posture and I think we can forget to teach that to our kids! We can quiet our voices and tell them to quiet theirs. We usually say, “use your whisper voice”. Then we’ll take their little hands and fold them and show them to put their heads down with their eyes closed. Now, this never happens perfectly, of course, but take the time to show them. Eventually they’ll start doing it on their own.
Ask them for prayer requests
I know if you have a baby and young toddler this may look differently, but you can ask, “Are you thankful for your mommy and daddy?” Usually it’s a yes, but if you have our two year old, sometimes it’s a no! Anyway, you can prompt them in this way or if you know of a specific prayer request you can tell them that we are praying for this person or circumstance.
Have them repeat
I love that my husband does this for our girls. He’ll ask them, “Can I teach you to pray?” I love that he asks this because he’s inherently showing them that there’s a correct way to pray.
Our two year old loves to pray because my husband says, “repeat after me” and she copies his prayer. It’s the sweetest thing in the world.
Check my blog post, Teaching Kids to Pray While They’re Young for more prayer tips!
SINGING TIPS
Worship well
We always encourage our girls to sing, but we tell them to sing well. Young kids have the tendency to be silly with their singing, which is fine in the right time and place, but we want to help them sing to the Lord well because He’s worthy of our worship.
Sing a song they know
Now that our girls have a few songs under their belt, they like to choose a song! I encourage you to do this too. Also, sing two songs if you can, one they know and one they don’t know. If you can only get through one, then that’s totally fine and not a huge deal.
If you do only one, then go with one that they know so that they can be apart of the worship too.
Play an instrument
If you can and are able, I highly encourage you to play the piano, guitar, or whatever instrument you can play. If the night has been long and tough, then just sing with your voices. If you’re not musically inclined, that is okay! Maybe you can play the music through your phone or go acapella! The point is to worship.
Again, we are not looking for a perfectly assembled family worship. These are just tips and ideas if you have not thought to do these things.
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Maybe you’re already doing all of these things, then continue in your efforts! May the Lord be glorified and if you have more tips please share them with me! We’re always looking to improve or make what we’re doing better!