On this broadcast, we discuss the books we have written on the family at church. We will encourage families to understand the importance of the local church, and how each of our books can assist families to engage local church life to the fullest.

Hey, welcome to the Church and Family Life podcast. Let me tell you a couple of things real quick before we get going. Hope you can come to our Theology of the Family Conference at Richcrest, North Carolina, May 20-23. Just Before that, a singles conference called Holiness to the Lord, May 19 and 20. Also go to our website.

We have lots of resources, over 5,000. Churchandfamilylife.com. Also, I just published a book called The Family at Church, How Parents Are Tour Guides for Joy. I think this book could really help sweeten your local church experience. Okay, let's get on now with the podcast.

Well, welcome to the Church and Family Life podcast. I'm Scott Brown, and with me is Jason Dome. Here again. Hey, let's go. So, Church and Family Life exists to proclaim the servicancy of Scripture for Church and Family Life, for the spread of the gospel across the generations.

And this week we're going to discuss two books. We're going to discuss this book, The Family at Church, by Joel Beeke. And Joel, thank you for joining us. My pleasure, Scott. Always good to be with you.

Yeah, so Joel Beeke is the president and professor of systematic theology at Puritan Reformed Theological Seminary, and he is a pastor at the Heritage Reformed Congregation in Grand Rapids, Michigan. It's so good to have you, Joel. Joel Svigel Great. David Hicks You know, for over a decade, you've, you know, we've talked and we've preached together, and you've really helped us to understand the doctrine of the family and its functionality and how to experience both church and family life. These things are so important to both of us, and particularly to incorporate children in the context of the Church, to help them to love the Church.

And so we're going to talk about these two books. We're going to talk about your book, and I just wrote a book called The Family at church, how parents are tour guides of joy, and 20 chapters to help young parents particularly understand how to help their children really find the sweetness of church life. That's really my whole goal. And your book and my book, they really were written for the same motive, but they have a little bit different twist. And so I think it's worthwhile to look at both of them.

Joel, let's look at your book first. I just wanna encourage people to go out and buy this book. I bought it and I really like it. I've given it away to people since you first published it. So, Joel, tell us about your motives and what the heartbeat of this book is.

All right, yes. My book is not nearly as complete as yours Scott and you covered a lot more basis but I was doing a little series of books on family and When I thought about the church and our relationship as a family to the church my conviction was to just really focus on preaching. How can we get our kids to get more out of preaching? How can we ramp up their expectation when they go to church? How can we teach them how to listen better?

And how can we teach them how to retain what they've heard. So the first half of the book actually focuses exactly on those three things, preparing your children, then teaching them how to listen, and then how to retain it. I give five practical pointers, I think, to parents in each of those categories or thereabouts. And then the second half of the book I look at prayer meetings. I think they're so so important.

In fact prayer meetings, congregational prayer meetings, are one of my joyous things in life. I love to go to them. And probably my greatest disappointment, my greatest sense of failure as a pastor, is that I can't get the majority of my people out to a prayer meeting. It just bothers me endlessly. It's bothered me for decades.

So I did a study one whole summer on prayer meetings and their value, and I discovered the tie-in between prayer meetings and revival, And that really started burning in my soul especially when I studied the prayer meetings and revivals in Scotland and Saw that a lot of prayer meetings and revivals began just even with children Some children praying in a barn Yeah, the Holy Spirit came down upon them and they started praying earnestly and their parents heard their prayers and the parents started getting spiritually concerned and pretty soon revival broke out in that area. And I just wanted to show in the second half of this book that prayer meetings and revivals, if we're really serious about the church being revived, we've got to reinstitute earnest, heartfelt prayer meetings. So that was my passion. And then in both parts, I have an underlying passion that really motivates everything and that's one key thought I want to get across Scott And then I'll turn it back over to you That's this thought If Jesus Christ gave his blood for his bride the church and loved her so much that he gave everything for her, then we as parents need to be very careful how we speak about Christ's bride.

I've gone through quite a bit in my life. I know you have too, Scott, in terms of people don't always speak well of us, and we face criticism and so on. My wife and I made an agreement when our kids were three and one and newborn, we said, we will never speak one ill word about the church in front of our children. We want to raise them with an entirely positive attitude to the church. So whenever we had some concerns, maybe about this elder or about that church member or unhappy about something, we always did that in private.

And I've seen so many families go shipwrecked when they Complain about the church and the kids grow up and they leave the church or they go to a much more liberal church And then they leave the church altogether. So that's my underlying motive also for reading this book. I want parents To promote in their children that the time to go up to the house of God, to hear what the living God has to say to you today, dear children, this is an exciting time, a glorious time, the most important time of your week, the most important time of your life, God's going to speak to you today. The God of the universe is going to deal with you today. I mean, that's wonderful.

So the importance of preaching, the importance of prayer, means those are the only two points I'm getting across. Joe, what's the profile of the person who will get the Absolute most out of reading your book. Well, what I'm hoping is that the typical church member You know We all take sacred things for granted after a while and the typical church member often starts taking the preacher for granted church for granted Oh, well, we got to go up to prayer the house of prayer again today But I want to light a fire under the average church member and say, you've gotta treat the Lord's Day as something very special in your family. For the time your kids get up, say to them, this is the Lord's Day, We get to go to the house of God. This is exciting.

I think the typical, I'm aiming at the typical faithful churchgoer who somehow is getting in the mindset that kids don't get that much out of church, and so, we won't talk to our kids about the sermon afterwards, they talk about all kinds of other things, and it sends a message to the kids, You know what? Church isn't all that important. It's something we do. Right. You know, Joe, one thing that's really common, you know, in both of our books is that we're advocating that parents really power up and they help their children.

You don't just take your children to church. Children need help. If they're going to enjoy it, you have to help them to enjoy it. If they're going to get something out of the sermons, a parent has to do a few things to help them. You don't just take your children and throw them in there like bumps on a log and bonk them on the head when they're disobedient.

You have to help them love it. You have to help them love every part of it. And of course, you've spent your time in this book to help them love the preaching and love the praying. And you know, I've added, help them love the singing, help them love the Lord's Supper, help them love the fellowship time, you know. And I try to break down all the elements of local church life.

But what is common and what is so critical for both of these books is that we're both saying, you parents must power up. You've got to take action. You've got to lead your children, teach your children. The Church of Jesus Christ is the most important place you ever take your children. And so you need to treat it that way.

Exactly. Amen. Yeah. Yeah, we're up on page. So you've got these books about the family at church.

I'd like to go just a couple of hours later and outside of your books and ask you this question. So, the family after church. We're three men who believe that it is the Lord's day, and extends through the rest of the day. So, you get home, the reason I ask this question is, as a father, I feel like I've got a reasonable handle on the things that you're advocating in your books, but not very good handle at all on the hours after we get home from church? How can you keep your children and your family engaged in having that continuous time of worship after you get home?

I'm glad you asked. Your pay will now be doubled. I have a chapter, I have a whole chapter about that in my book, so you're gonna have to buy the book. I'm not just gonna tell you, I'm not gonna spoon feed you. No, that is really important.

The hours after the meetings of the church are so critical, and parents, again, they have to take action. If, hey, if the afternoon after the preaching and the fellowship of the saints is boring and difficult, it's because you fathers are not taking action to make it wonderful, And they're really simple things that you need to do. So that's my answer is that those hours, oh, take walks, read together, sing together. You know, there are all kinds of things that you can, I think I list 10 or 20 things that, of course, you know, we hold a confessional view of the Lord's day, that it is an entire day, and that it is a day of delight, that it's a day to set aside all work and all the normal things? It should be the most different day, the most treasured day.

And so it should be treated that way. So parents have to make sure that it is that. But if a parent just wants to flop out on the couch and be a couch potato, the Lord's Day isn't going to be that much of a delight for a kid. So there are lots of things you know to do. Joel, how do you unpack you know those after the service of the Lord's day in the afternoon?

Yeah, well, we follow pretty much the way I was brought up. We add a few things to it, but one thing we try to do is We try to, as our kids get old enough to write notes, we go over their notes after church. We weren't always entirely consistent on that, but we try to talk about the sermon, certainly during the noon hour meal, ask questions about what they learned. I think it's great when a father actually turns that time into a challenge in his own mind, especially if your children are quite young and he tries to summarize the sermon for his children at a seven-year-old level or a nine-year-old level. I mean That's fantastic.

And then I also believe that especially the very young children, I mean, you know, they've been in church for an hour and a half and they need to run around a little bit, they need to let out some steam, of course. But The overall thrust of the day, even if you all take a nap in the afternoon for a little while or they run around for a little while, the overall thrust of the day is worship. And so what my parents always had us do is between the two services, we would always have a time of reading. We all had our own religious book that my dad helped us pick out, and we would read for 45 minutes to an hour. And that was really good.

And then my mother, after a nap, my mother would actually read to us some stories of how God worked in the lives of children for maybe 20 minutes. And by that time, you know, it's almost, you have an early supper and you're back off to church, and we have youth group after that, you know, or something, or adult class. And so your whole day is filled with filled with the things of things of God. Joe, you published a set of books. I've read most of these stories to my grandchildren, and I've forgotten the name of them, but Give us, how do people get them from you?

We did several children's books. Actually, my wife and I have four board books that are going to come out in the spring. The illustrations are just completed and they're going to be for children two to four. Okay. And on faith, hope, and love.

Oh, nice. But anyway, yeah, with other women in the church, I've actually done some other books. I did Building on the Rock book with a school teacher, which is five volumes of stories. That's probably what you're referring to. Yeah.

And also some books like Reformation Heroes, Puritan Heroes. Right now, I'm doing Modern Heroes for Children with Doug Bond. We're co-authoring Douglas Bond. And then I'm going to do Ancient Heroes, God willing, next year with Michael Hagan. And so to have a complete set of church heroes for children, that's about a 10 to 14 age group, a little bit older.

The stories book, Billing on the Rock, is more like for five to nine. I love writing for children because it helps the whole family, you know, especially when, I mean, fathers use these books in family worship. Mothers enjoy reading the stories to their children. And I love it when kids come up to me at conferences and say, my favorite story, you know what it is? And I can't even remember the story I wrote.

And they tell me, you know, and they tell me the whole story again excitedly. Kids relate to stories, so it's wonderful. Yeah. Joel, what are a couple of practical tips for for prayer meetings? Well, I think one of the things that kills prayer meetings is when certain individuals dominated and pray too long.

So we try we try to ask our people don't pray over five minutes each so they give other people a turn. One of the most positive things about prayer meetings in my mind is is not remembering every little permittee of everybody in the church endlessly but just storming the mercy seat for divine benediction for the Holy Spirit to be poured on the church for the pastor to be endowed for the next Sunday just a passionate time where the congregation is lifted up, you feel like you've got the ear of the Lord of Sabaoth, and there's communion with God, and there's freedom in storming the mercy seat. That's to me a good prayer meeting. And you can't always produce that automatically. Some prayer meetings, just like us as fathers around our own kitchen table with our families, are not the greatest prayers.

And we have to say, Lord, forgive me, help me to do better next time. Prayer meetings are like that as well, but the aim should be high. The aim should be we're going to go have communion with God and pour out our hearts. I like the Acts formula. Pour out our hearts in adoration, confession, thanksgiving, and supplication.

Not just supplications, not just our needs, but spend time thanking and praising God, and spend time confessing sin. Also just spend time adoring Him. Tell Him how wonderful He is. No, I totally agree with that, Joel. And I think my personal opinion is one of the mistakes that is made in corporate prayer meetings is when the first part of it is asking for requests.

So it's one request after another. Some of it is information that maybe shouldn't be shared, but that just gobbles up time of storming the mercy seat, exactly like you said. I mean, I would rather have us dedicate the time for prayer. What we do in our corporate prayer meetings is that we sing first to prepare our hearts, and then a very short, maybe five-minute encouragement to the people, and then just going straight to prayer that way. I would rather have us go as fast to prayer as we can rather than having it be too much, you know, kind of sharing time.

We do the same thing exactly, Scott, except every other time we do take written prayer requests and we don't wait for people to give us the prayer requests. That takes a lot of time, but they just hand it in as they come in on a piece of paper. We just read them off quickly and one of Our two pastors writes them all down, the one who's not opening, the one who's closing. And then if some of those prayer requests are forgotten, the closing pastor just briefly remembers them. So it doesn't take a lot of time, but this way every month there's no one that's sick, that's forgotten.

But the alternate time, we don't take prayer because we do, just like you said, we go right into it. So we end up with 45 minutes of prayer time. Right. One of the things that we've done, we do it every once in a while, we'll dedicate the prayer time to praying for the lost, and we'll just have people get up and share a conversation that they had with the lost person, and we'll pray. And those are very exciting.

Those are so invigorating when we have those. But I agree with you, it's good to keep the prayers away from praying for Aunt Suzy's toe type thing. We do care about Aunt Suzy's toe, but not as much as the glory of God. You know, I'll never forget years ago, I was in a prayer meeting in my church and the woman started praying about the healing of her right tail light. Well, there's always people that go to extremes.

You can't control pervings altogether, can you? But what I like to do is if someone gets out of order, I don't interrupt them, but later on, not the same night, but I'll call him up or just find a way of talking with him and just saying, you know, this maybe isn't too appropriate and explain why and just try to be preventative so that we don't get in a cycle of constant repetition and irritation. But I think with a little training, 98% of the prayers will be very edifying. I also like the idea, once in a while we do this, we just have a prayer meeting for the nation. We just did last Thursday for the elections tomorrow.

And oh, the brethren prayed beautifully for that prayer meeting. So heartfelt. So that's a good cause too. Yeah, so the preaching of the Word of God and the prayer meetings. I think, you know, you focused in on just tremendously significant events and the training of children to enter into those is really important.

I just can't emphasize more how important it is for parents to lead their children along the way. You know, take them along the way and teach them along the way so that when you get there, they're ready. I think that the Psalms of a sense were sung that way. The families would sing those songs as they would go up the mountain, hence the songs of a sense. They would go up the mountain to worship God.

And you know, along the way, the children were there, they were kicking rocks, and they were singing the songs, and they were being prepared to enter into the worship of God. Parents really need to do that. We just can't be on autopilot in this matter of the worship of God. So anyway, Joel, thank you for writing the book. By the way, I did reread your book when I wrote my book, because I wanted to make sure I at least said a couple things right.

But I, you know, I wrote my book because I really wanted to encourage parents to do everything they could to make the worship of God in the local church, and everything the local church does to be the center of their life. A local church should be the center of a family life, and then everything should fit around it, not the other way around. Yeah. And I want parents to help their children love the church. I want them to walk into that church and show them the treasures that are there, the treasures in the songs, the treasures in the preaching, the treasures in the singing, the treasures in the person sitting next to them.

I want them just to see the moment, the beauty of the moment, and what it means to be joined and knit together, and how critical it is to keep your children in the meetings of the church and help them when they're distracted. They're going to be distracted. I get distracted. And recognize that they really are bringing their children up to the gates of everlasting joy. Faith comes by hearing.

And the way that they hear will determine the very nature of their eternity. And so, parents have a big role. So, that's why I wrote my book. And I know, Joel, you know, you had the same things in mind with yours. Yeah, yeah, let me just say one thing, Scott, before we sign off here.

But my wife and I were just taking a walk just before I came on with you. And she was saying to me something quite interesting. She said, you know, I just think so often what a blessing it is that all four of our parents just love the church. I told him we were going to do something on the church. He said, you know, it just, I mean the Holy Spirit has to bless it of course, but when the Spirit blesses that, the children just love the church.

And you know, so I mean we're two examples. I just plain love the church, but I saw my dad love it and my mom love it and she had the same experience. Her dad was an elder too for 40 years, over 30, 40 years. And you know that kind of love you just can't shake off when you grow up unless you just harden yourself. And so I think it's very important, not only to the two church services on Sunday, but also to the prayer meeting.

And parents take even young children. We took our children when they were three, four years old to the prayer meeting. We brought them early on, say, I want to go to this prayer meeting. And I don't ever remember our children saying, oh, I don't want to go to a prayer meeting. No, this was unthought of in our house.

We get to go to a prayer meeting, we get to storm the mercy seat, isn't that wonderful? And maybe inside they thought, I don't feel like going tonight, but you know, I don't think they would dare say that to us. I think, you know, we're, this is such a positive thing. So we want to do it. Amen.

Yeah, we don't want parents to default to the idea, well, my children can't get anything out of this. That's just not true. And we, but we need to help them for sure. Well, Joel, hey, it's been rich. Thank you so much.

Thank you for writing the book and all the other books that you write as well. And Jason, thanks for joining us. We'll be back next Monday for another podcast for the sufficiency of scripture for Church and Family Life. I hope you can join us. God bless you and God bless you, Joel.

Thanks again. Thank you. God bless. Thanks for listening to the Church and Family Life podcast. We have thousands of resources on our website, announcements of conferences coming up.

Hope you can join us. Go to churchandfamilylife.com. See you next Monday for our next broadcast of the Church and Family Life podcast.