As civilization is crumbling all around us, your family doesn’t have to collapse. God has ordained the local church as a central means to build you up with joy. That’s Scott Brown and Jason Dohm’s message in this podcast as they offer an introduction to the book, The Family at Church: 20 Days to Transform Your Local Church Experience. The book’s aim is to give practical steps on how parents can guide their children to get the most out of local church life: through the preaching of God’s Word, singing, ordinances, fellowship, and celebration of His weekly Sabbath rest.

Welcome to the Church and Family Life podcast. Church and Family Life exists to proclaim the sufficiency of Scripture. And our focus today is this book, this book called The Family at Church, How Parents Are Tour Guides for Joy, 20 Days to Transform Your Local Church Experience. I wrote this book a little while ago, but I think it can be really helpful for families if they really get a hold of how to engage local church life. The local church should be the center of your life.

And how do you squeeze the greatest amount of good out of your local church life? In this book, I'm not trying to fix every problem in every church. It's really about- It's too thin for that. Yeah, it's too thin for that. It's really about what can you do?

What can you do to maximize the goodness out of your local church life? Because actually we have responsibilities to make things great. Scott, if you can judge a book by endorsements, this is a great book. You got Paul Washer and Sam Waldron, Conrad and Bayway, Josh Byce, Kevin Swanson. You've got some heavy hitters, but you let some little guys endorse your book too.

So I wanted to start by reading my endorsement because I think it drives home a really important point about the book. All right, here's my endorsement of the book. I'm glad well-known people are recommending this book. I'm grateful they would lend their names to it. But I am the perfect person to commend it to you.

Why? Because Scott and Deborah started teaching Janet and me these things before we even married and it pointed us in a direction which has been invaluable in bringing up our children in the training and admonition of the Lord. The Brown family practiced what Scott is preaching in this book. This is what he has been preaching as long as I've known him. We met in 1990, and I have several decades of reaping the benefits you can, too.

When I read this book, I thought, same old, same old, same old Scott, same old message, same old story. You know, I've been listening to you. I commend the local church to especially young families for decades now, and so this is really the culmination of decades of what has really been on your heart for families, is that they would help families engage wholeheartedly in local church life. Hey, and I really wanted to focus this book on young families. I know, I think this could be helpful for any family, but when I was writing it, I had a young family in my mind.

You gotta, they're busier than you can imagine, and they're having children, and they're pressed. And so I wrote this book in short chapters, 12, 13 minutes, And what I was hoping is that a young husband and wife would sit down and read it and then just figure out how they might maximize it in their local church life. Here's the deal. Getting a strong start in local church life will pay dividends later. Yeah.

Here's the paradox. You're the head of a parachurch ministry, and what you care about is the local church. Yeah, how about that? And I have no doubt if you were forced to choose between the two, you wouldn't spend a nanosecond making that decision. You would find Scott Brown in the local church.

So this is a really valuable perspective that the local church is really where the action is, and families should not have it on the periphery of their life, but they should have it really near the center and that their church will be the better for it, but their families and their own personal walks with the Lord will be the better for it as well. Yeah, The church is the center of the universe. You know, you see pictures of this. The tabernacle in the wilderness, you had the 12 tribes of Israel, some to the north, some to the south, some to the east, some to the west, all pointed to the tabernacle, to the worship of God. A family should make the worship of God the center of its life, and local church life the center of their lives.

And they oughta, well, do whatever they think they oughta do, But do local church life first, and if you can fit other stuff in, then go ahead. Because that's where God is. Right. Well, God's everywhere. Yes, that's true, but He's with His gathered people in a very special, particular way.

And so this is where we experience them in a special particular way. And you don't wanna miss that. I wanted to say, parents, you are tour guides for everlasting joy. Be a great tour guide. Don't be a lazy, know nothing tour guide.

Be a tour guide that points out the glory that shows the treasures that opens up the beauties of a thing. Yeah. Now, Scott, how can a parent be a tour guide for joy when the local church has so many flaws? Well, a local church has the word of God. A local church has singing.

A local church has people. A local church has ordinances called baptism and the Lord's Supper. So the church has an evangelistic mandate to make disciples. So whether your church is strong or weak, those things are there in most churches. So you can find a church that has those elements.

And one of the things that the book says is, even the flaws of a church, God uses for your benefit and help. A perfect church wouldn't expand you the way you need to be expanded, but a church with other sinners, other impatient people, meaning the other people aren't the only sinners, you add your sins to the mix. Other people aren't the only ones impatient. You add your impatience to the mix, and this is where we learn a lot about what it means to become more like Jesus. Yeah, we don't want to be too pompous about ourselves, because we're always in the midst of fallen sinners.

And that's how God designed the church. I can't remember who it was I was reading. It might've been John Calvin, I don't know. But this author was saying God actually intended for the church to have flaws. Well, that makes sense.

It's like, it's normal. It's the way it is on the fallen planet. Yeah, your workplace has flaws, your government has flaws, your city has flaws, your family has flaws, you have flaws, but you want a church where there's no hardships. That's not realistic. Yeah.

Hey, I wanted to walk families through the particular elements of local church life. The singing. How do you really engage your children in the singing? Even teaching your children to sing. Don't just let them mealy-mouth passively stand there in church.

And I talk about really the doctrine and the purpose of singing. So you just help your children understand what they are doing. They're not just singing, it's a bigger deal. Scott, I see you hovering over the table of contents, so I want to do a preemptive strike here because there's something from the introductory material, even before you get to the table of contents, that I thought was a really good way to frame the book. I'm glad you framed it this way.

I'd actually like to read it. It's not long. It's titled The Power of Church and Family Life. Here's what that section says. The church and the family are the most influential institutions that exist in the world.

God created these two institutions for his glory. They are the chief gospel preaching, life equipping institutions. You probably can't do much about the massive movements that are tearing apart the moral and social structure of the world, but you can do something about your family and your local church. The assumption that runs throughout this book is that the local church is designed by God. I am arguing that there are particular things the church does.

True Christians do them week in and week out. Because of This divine design, families need to make local churches the center of their priorities. I realize that most people who call themselves Christians do not treat local churches like Christians. So yes, Western civilization is collapsing, but your family isn't collapsing. Or doesn't have to collapse.

Doesn't have to collapse. Your local church doesn't have to collapse. I don't think Western civilization is collapsing in our local churches. I don't think so. There's a lot of beauty going on.

There's growth, people turn toward the Lord. They're not collapsing. They're actually being sanctified. You've been behind a thousand different cars that had the bumper sticker, think globally, act locally. Right.

This is actually the perfect expression of that. We should be thinking globally, and we should be aware of the mega trends that are bringing down civilizations, but we don't have to be paralyzed by them, and where you actually act is locally in the local church and in your family. You can have an impact on your local church by loving those people, by drinking in the word of God, by evangelizing, encouraging one another, speaking to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs. There's a lot you can do in a church to make that church better. And of course your family, I mean you have, you know, a husband and wife have complete jurisdiction over the culture of their family.

There's something, you can do something in this world that actually matters. Act locally. Act locally, yeah. So anyway, hey, that's the book. There are 20 chapters about a lot of these details.

A lot of it's kind of how to. How do you do this? How do you experience the Lord's day when you have little kids? How do you help them really delight in the Lord on that day? Well, it's not easy.

Here's the problem with this book. I'm really telling parents it's a big job, but somebody's gotta do it, and it's such an important job. They need to power up. Don't just experience church life sauntering in casually and just letting things happen. No, you're on a mission.

You're on a mission for the kingdom of God. And you're there to acquire wisdom, and you're there to communicate wisdom. You're there to love and be loved. And there are a lot of activities that are surrounding all those kinds of things. So this isn't a book that encourages parents just to kind of show up at church.

I'm not saying, hey, you got to get back into church. That's not the message of this book. The message is squeeze every ounce of good out of your local church experience. We've worked together for a long time, known each other for a long time, more than 30 years. There have been people who were walking with us on the way who decided, nah, I'd rather do something else.

I don't think they're better for it. I don't think they're happier for it. So judgmental. I don't regret, I don't regret having been on this track for more than three decades now. I only regret that I didn't do it more wholeheartedly.

It's one of those categories where you think I'm getting disproportionate return on the investment of my time and efforts here. The amount of good I get from this just so outweighs what's required of me. I only wish I had invested more. It's like if you had invested in Amazon 20 years ago, You'd be kicking yourself that you didn't put twice as much in because of the rate of return. Hey, this is the bride of Christ, the beautiful bride of Christ.

This is the city of God with precious jewels. This is the place of living water, and families miss so many wonderful things if they neglect local church life. That's really the whole book. I don't have anything else to say. You're depressing sales, you know that.

I am, yeah. You should still get the book. Hey, you know what? We're gonna do some sessions on this book on each chapter as the year goes on. I hope that churches buy boxes of these things and pass them out and help their families go through the family at church, how parents are tour guides for joy.

And I really do pray for the sweetening, the strengthening of local churches through the families that are so dedicated to the ordinary means of grace that are so good. So that's the whole deal. Yeah. Okay. Thank you for joining us on the Church and Family Life podcast, and we hope to see you next time.

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