Editor's Note: This article is number six in a multi-part series on family worship. If you'd like, you can read Part I, II,  III, IV, and V before continuing.

In the last article, we started to build a structure upon the foundation that is the practice of family worship. We looked at some key elements that make up this life-giving practice: read, sing, and pray. So, you have a devotional book to read through, or a book of the Bible, you have a hymn book or songs on your phone, you have some ideas for prayer. Good! Yet, like most things, when you first start to practice something, you immediately encounter the nitty-gritty questions that make it up. When it comes to family worship, these questions consist of: how often, how long and where?

How Often?

How often should you do family worship? Answer: regularly. One of the great equalizers in life is that no matter where you live, how rich or poor, how skilled or not, everyone gets 24 hours in a day. And each day, we all make decisions as to what tasks are most important, and those are the things we spend our 24 hours doing. Everything else is sacrificed as less important. Geoff Dyer helpfully says, “Your deepest desire is the one manifested by your daily life and habits.”¹ If the desire is there, then it will be revealed in a habit. If you only commit to doing family worship “when it works,” you will find that it won’t work because other desires will win the day in the end. Family worship is a habit that flows out of a love for the one God (Deut. 6:4-6). 

Now, how regularly you worship as a family might look different depending on your stage of life. If you are married, start today and do it every day! Then, if the Lord blesses you with children, the transition will be seamless. If this finds you with young children, start every day! If you have older children who are not used to family worship, you might start once a week for a season and increase it over time.

The other thing to consider is when. When are you together as a family? When just starting out, it is helpful to have family worship piggyback on something you are already doing. Mealtimes and bedtime tend to be the best.  

When our oldest was born, the most natural time was right before bed, and we would sing and pray with him. When he turned one, we added a very short Bible story to the routine. Over time, with the addition of two other children, our regular family worship now takes place before bed. It has become so ingrained that, if the schedule is off in any way, they will ask us, “When are we doing family worship?” May it be so in your home, too! But that demands the next question…

How long?

How long should family worship take? Answer: not long…at least not at the beginning! When we introduced this practice to our oldest when he was born, it took maybe 2-3 minutes with a song and prayer. Over time, with more children, and especially as they got older, we added longer stories and memorization, and without trying or noticing, we found ourselves hitting 10-15 minutes. Today, with an almost eight, five, and a three-year-old, we are hitting about 30 minutes, and nobody complains about time, and they are certainly aware of the commitment! But dear brother or sister, aim for brief sessions at the start and work your way from there. 

Where?

Where should you practice family worship? That depends on how you answered the above questions. If it is mealtime, then it will be at the table. This is a good place as distractions are at a minimum, children are contained, and you are all together. You will need wisdom to know whether you do it during the meal or after, as that will depend on you. At bedtime, we sit in a room without a TV. No toys or other books are allowed to be at hand. Bedrooms tend to have lots of those things around, and so although a potentially nice space, they are usually too distracting. 

Be Flexible!

With all of that said, it is important to make one final appeal: be flexible. I cannot count how often we have done family worship in the car on the way home late at night. Obviously, you can still sing and pray, but when it comes to content, we have a few podcasts that we have worked through over the years that have been helpful.² If there is an evening I am out late, my wife carries on without me, and vice versa. The danger here is that you become so flexible that it becomes irregular, but even then, it is better to start with something and go from there.

Along with flexibility is understanding that seasons will change. Every time another child was born, we had to figure out how to learn at a level that challenged the older, while still feeding the younger. Currently, with an almost three-year-old, we start with a brief story and a song from the New City Catechism (we have sung What is the Lord’s Prayer? for weeks now!), and then we jump into the reading, song, memory, and prayer with the two older kids. We have given our youngest the freedom to walk around during the catechism song, but even now he is getting to the place of sitting through all of it, which might change up the structure again soon!

Beloved brother or sister, may the love of the one true God be on your heart, and, as a result, may you develop a habit of doing family worship regularly, briefly, and in a helpful place, all the while being flexible with your days and seasons. May your children say, “Why aren’t we doing family worship tonight?!” and, by the grace of God, may what is brief become longer and desired by your whole family.

In our next article, I will address some of the problems that we all face when it comes to worshipping Christ at home as a family.

1 - Geoff Dyer, Zona (New York: Vintage, 2012, 161, quoted in You Are What You Love by James K.A. Smith, p.29.

2 - The Biggest Story Podcast by Crossway and God’s Big Story by The Village Church.