Preparing one’s children’s heart for weekly worship starts with the parents preparing their own. Dad and mom must set the tone, first, to please God, but second, because kids normally have an accurate radar that can detect if their parents are focused, or not, in worshipping Him. Going through the motions at church is a real danger we must guard against—preparing for worship must begin in the heart. 

 

In this podcast, Scott Brown and Jason Dohm, joined by special guests Danny and Megan Craig, discuss this priority. With four children eight and under, the Craigs explain that the goal for their kids on Sundays is not simply to sit still in church, but to love God as they worship. To get in the right frame of mind, their practice is to devote time on Saturday night to tune their hearts as a family for the next day’s service. Other advice they give: communicate clear expectations to your children ahead of time and then lovingly hold them to those expectations during the worship service. 

Thank you for joining us on the Church and Family Life podcast. Today we have Danny and Megan Craig who run the Home School Summits offerings, which are really fantastic. You should check them out. But we want to talk about keeping your children in church. They have a young family and have some great thoughts for us.

I hope you benefit from the discussion. So here we are Jason. We're talking about keeping your children in church for worship. Of course, you know, it was the normative practice in the church to keep children in the worship of God until the 20th century, at the rise of pragmatism, the rise of the youth ministry movement, the rise of demographic strategies, really blew up the whole pattern. It's actually a biblical pattern and a historic pattern of keeping children in the worship of God and engaging them with with worship.

So Danny and Megan, why don't we just start by you giving us a profile of your family? How many children and what ages? What are we dealing with here? Yeah, we have four children ages six five Two and eight months. Okay, so you are in the challenging window.

Awesome Perfect Jason they lied to us. They told us that the hardest was going to be going from two to three, but it's been three to four. Okay. It's been a challenging one. I think because everybody says when you go from two to three, you go from zone to man to man.

Well, I just realized that Megan was juggling all three on her own and I had to step in at number four. So, yeah. Welcome. Well, I'm glad you're in a church that gathers the family for worship. You know, a few years ago, I wrote this article called, My Top Four Favorite Family-Anihilated Church Pastors, Matthew Henry, Jonathan Edwards, John Newton, and John Bunyan.

Okay. So this is, we're not talking about something new. We're talking something that's really, really important. I thought he was gonna say Kevin Swanson. I can't believe you didn't make the list.

Kevin Swanson, he made the list. Yeah, there you go. So let's talk about some of the challenges. What are some of the challenges that you guys have encountered as young parents? Well, there's a long list of them, but I think as Danny and I have been bringing our children into worship with us, I think repeatedly, one of the biggest challenges is getting our own hearts prepared and in the right place and not distracted and not thinking about the, you know, five million different things that accompany having four kids sitting in the same row with you and just having our own hearts prepared and ready for worship on a given Sunday morning, let alone having our children's hearts also trying to align them to come into the worship service.

So that's a big challenge. 06 Yeah. And I think obviously, some of the practical challenges that come to mind are, how do you get, if you've been to Reformation before, it's two to two hours and 15 minutes. So just the whole sitting still, juggling. But I think even more than that, to piggyback off of what Megan said, we really, we don't want just our kids to sit still.

We want our kids to love God. And so making sure that we've done, as she said, the adequate preparation to make sure our hearts are tuned. That looks like guarding what we do on Saturday nights to make sure that the ramp into worship is not beset with things that will just prove it difficult for us to set our hearts and minds towards what the Lord might do in our midst on Sunday morning. So that's part of it. So that's part of it.

And then I think also just making sure that some of the challenges would be, we're involved in the scene as well. And so making sure that if we're on duty, that we're also having to have the appropriate help lined up. But one of the neat things about that, and I'm kind of moving from challenges to different things that have helped, but the opportunity for us to be involved in worship has actually helped us, right? Like if I have to sit down and do the worship prep on Sunday morning, that's an actual time where I'm tuning my heart into worship and then by God's grace, if I'm engaged, I'm setting the example for my my kids to be engaged as well. You know I think you put your finger on something really really important and that is your your own regard for the Lord's Day, your own preparation, because the the regard that you have, the joy that you have in the worship of God, kind of the delight of being part of the fellowship and the singing, I mean, that, to me, that's sort of the foundation of it all.

And so intentionally, you're bringing your children into the most important event of the week, right? It's the worship of God and the preaching. You know, it was interesting, at our national conference a couple weeks ago, I had Joe Beeke give a message on, you know, helping your children access the sermons, right? It was a wonderful message. But one of the things that he demonstrated there that was so unusual, he said not only in his family was the church the most important thing, the preaching was the most important thing for his family, not just in the church, but his parents just centralized that sermon as important, as the most important event for their family, not just the church.

I thought that was really powerful. He was talking about a different culture. Most people didn't grow up in a culture like that. But I think that bears witness to what you're saying. Parents, first of all, they must love it.

They must see the goodness and the delight of it. They must see the sacredness of it. And, and that's, and that's what children will grasp. It's the most important thing. Yeah.

This goes so far beyond tips and techniques. Oh yeah. So I'm so glad you started with, you know, the condition of my heart and the condition of my wife's heart and that's children need to learn many, many things. One thing they don't need to learn is whether mom and dad heart is in it. They are born with a scary, accurate radar on that and so they know when we're just mailing it in And so it absolutely, they detect whether God is being worshiped.

And another thing I don't want to let just go by, you said something else that I feel is so critical. You begin on Saturday night so that you're ready. You know, so it's not pandemonium on Sunday. You've, you've said we don't do it perfectly. Yes.

We try. Yes, yes, we know. That it's even on your radar with children as young is just a very encouraging sign. I don't know how many years into our parenting before Saturday night was really on our radar, but it has such a profound effect on Sunday that Saturday night matters a lot. The Jews called it the Day of Preparation where they prepared for the Lord's Day.

In fact, my wife tells me that there were there were some Sundays where the day of preparation meant that their mother would have their six children sleep in their clothes minus the shoes, right? So, you know, preparing is really, really, is really critical and it's, it's good for children. I think there's multiple different ways that we work to prepare too. And I think one of them is physical preparations such as clothes and food and things like that. But one thing I appreciate that Danny's incorporated into our Saturday night exercise as a family is we read over the sermon text.

And I think that helps our children be spiritually prepared to hear the sermon the next day and helps, you know, daddy giving five, 10 minutes of explanation of what's going on in this passage helps them to be able to connect a little bit better in the middle of the sermon on Sunday when we are a little bit spread thinner and we're not having conversations with our children in the row quite so much, you know, and it helps them to be able to tune in and engage and listen with a little bit more understanding, having already heard the passage just 12 hours before to be able to connect with that. So I think physical preparations on Saturday, but also spiritual preparations too. You know, Megan, that's brilliant. And one of the things that we've tried to do in our church is to enhance the preparation, is earlier in the week, we'll send out the songs we're gonna sing. We're hoping the families will sing those songs.

Now I'm sure they don't all do it, but if they're singing the songs during the week and then they sing them on Sunday, it's a double whammy. And if they know the scriptures, that's critical. We have a men's Bible study on Tuesday morning where we study what's going to be preached. We want those men to go back and teach their families. That's the design, that's what our hope is.

But that kind of spiritual preparation is is really really critical and I think that's what dr. Beeke was saying his whole family was focused on that sermon coming up in their family life I thought that was really helpful so here's here's a practical matter It sounds like sometimes you're both on the music team. How does that work? Time to go up and do music, and you have kids on your row. How does that work?

Perfectly. We're blessed to have extended family on both sides and also just other willing members of the church, single young ladies, et cetera, which is a great blessing. And so we definitely tap uncles and aunts and grandmas and grandpas and other people to help, which is a huge blessing. I know maybe not everybody has that, but that's been what's made it work for our family. Otherwise we probably wouldn't be able to do that simultaneously.

You know, Katie and Jed at five and six, you know, by God's grace, they can self-manage during that period of time. So it's the one and the two. A little more attention. Hey, the extended family are the most natural choices for that, but even if you don't have that, the friendships in the church can absolutely suffice for that, and that's been so instrumental in our church, particularly with young mothers with a few young children. You're outnumbered, you know, by the young children that you have, and young ladies in the church or other mothers in the church that have older children being able to jump in and help with that has just been wonderful.

Yeah. Yes, that's a tremendous blessing to us mamas. Hey, and it's a way we can serve each other. That's right. So as a mother, What are some of the things that you're dialed in on that maybe Danny isn't as much or impacts on you?

Yeah, you know, I think I have to work a little bit harder to really keep my mind spiritually engaged in that I'm not letting it get distracted with, oh, does somebody have a dirty diaper? And, oh, I think maybe they're getting hungry or, I think my mind is a lot quicker to kind of go down some of those trails naturally as a mother. But, and to pay attention to the needs of my children, but also to make sure that I'm staying engaged spiritually and listening as best as I can. And even as I have to, you know, tune out for a moment to deal with something, to quickly tune back in and to reengage and not to just let my mind wander. And I think, you know, one thing we've had to work out is just being in unity as a couple and having kind of a game plan of kind of who's in charge of who and who's taking care of what child at any one given time so that, you know, as it's maybe a little bit easier for Danny to kind of tune out things on the row at particular times that we're in unity that, you know, I can tap them and say, hey, Brea needs your attention.

Can you take her potty? Or somebody needs a diaper change. Or they just knocked over a cup of coffee and it needs to be cleaned up or whatever the case might be. And to just be in unity as a couple to address those things and be able to be able to be on the same page on that. So it definitely takes some engaging of the mind, engaging of all of the different faculties going on, but it's good exercises in faith.

One of the things that has helped is us just to actually pre-plan the service together a little bit. And so what that looks like for us is we have an initial exhortation and then time of prayer and confession and well actually exhortation, seeing prayer and confession and then sermon. And so we bring things and activities for the children and also set expectations like, hey, you're just gonna sit still on the couch next to me or on the pew next to me for the first 20 minutes. We're not gonna do any activities because activities sometimes take extra bandwidth for mom and dad to manage. And then when we're singing, we're all standing and seeing.

That's pretty straightforward. When we're praying, you're gonna sit on my lap while we pray. And then once we're done praying, you can have that little snack bag. And then there's this bag of coloring or different activities that can take you through the sermon. So that's been helpful for us to pre-plan what the different, how they're going to be conducting themselves in the different segments of the service.

And then I'm making sure that I'm following through with that plan. So what's the time investment to do that? It's probably five minutes. So what does that buy you on the back end? Not well, it was, it was a 15 minute conversation three years.

Right, right. And it buys you not being reactionary in the moment, which is, which is very precious. So the, the, the upfront investment on Saturday night or Sunday morning is minimal and what you get back from that is tremendous Yeah So one of the one of the things that's so common is that you hear particularly a mother She says well, I hardly heard that sermon at all. So how do you walk us through how you process that problem and what you do about it? Yeah, well, It's definitely a reality.

Sometimes it does feel like that. I will say, however, and this is just an encouragement to pastors out there, whenever you do notes, it is such a tremendous help to me as a mom because if I have to be out of it for two minutes, stepping out to do something and come back in, having those notes to kind of reorient myself back into what's being said is so helpful. So that's definitely a tool for me as a mom to be able to come back in. But yeah, it's definitely a challenge. And sometimes I come home from church on Sundays and feel like I really didn't get the flow and connection of the sermon.

And sometimes then, you know, over lunch on Sunday afternoon, we'll talk about it again as a family. And I'll say, like, how did that point connect to that? And like, you know, what did he have to say about this first or what it might be? And that's a good time that Danny's able to continue teaching and helping me if I missed some important points and connections that kind of helped to close the circle in my mind. But yeah, it is a real challenge.

There are times when I just feel like I missed large segments of things, whether it's, you know, I was literally out of the row, out of the sanctuary, or just my mind was, I was having a hard time engaging it. So, it's a discipline of my mind though too, because it's a challenge to, sometimes it's just easy to be like, well, I don't even know where they are, so why bother trying to reconnect? And that's not right, and that's dangerous, and I need to do my best to keep connecting back in and pick up what I can. Hey, I want to take this opportunity to encourage dads. Your wife is the one who's entrusted with large portions of the day training your children.

Don't think that you're the one who should be hearing the sermon uninterrupted. Sometimes, actually, you might choose to give that up so that the woman who's training your children with most of the hours of her days gets the sermon. We want our wives and mothers to be theologians because that's going to have an impact on the training they're doing. How do you kind of tag team work together? Cause that's what it really takes.

You know, Danny, how have you thought that through about how a husband can enhance, the whole experience? Yeah. Well, I mean, don't do it. Don't do perfectly by any stretch of imagination. I would say the pre-planning for sure.

A lot of the tone for the Sunday service is set by how we get out the door. So making sure that there's a good plan for the morning. I would say one of the things that also helps us is we do have a Sunday school, a family Sunday school ahead of time. So that's 30 minutes before the service. We attend that and that's fairly low key.

It's interactive, but that helps us kind of ramp into the whole thing. But the main point there was the plan ahead of time for the morning of, there's times where it's like, yeah, we didn't give enough time and we're just rushing out the door. But working on that together being in Unity. And then in the service, generally speaking right now, we have two kids that are fairly self-managing and two kids that need the direction. And I would say generally we're splitting those second two kids.

And so she's got the baby, I've got Bria. I think I'm guilty of letting it fall too much on her at times, but that's how we try to split it out. And then I also try to be just in tune to the discipline and the training that needs to happen in the midst of it. And I think that's just one of the things that we, at least we've come to the conclusion that we have to be very comfortable with. Like Sunday morning is a training session too.

And so those are investments that we're making now, seeds that we're planting. There's times where, you know, I'm out three times with Bria and I'm given three different spankings in a two-hour space. You know, and that's the exception. And by God's grace, now we see some of that paying off. But I think I try to make sure that I'm particularly in tune to any sort of discipline that needs to happen.

And I'm thankful for a church with a high noise tolerance. Yeah. That helps us a lot. The alternative to a willingness to have Sunday mornings be a training session is your kids Understanding that they have you over the barrel Right if they know you're not willing it for it to be a training session Then they sort of got you and understand it and can exploit that. You know, Danny, you said something that I wanted to bring us back to just a second ago.

You talked about, you know, getting through that spanking era where then it's not necessary anymore. I think this is one real discouragement with parents. They're in that one, two, maybe beyond the three-year-old time zone, and they are so discouraged. They think, is this ever going to end? But I like the way you said that.

It will end. It will end. It's that early investment of teaching children to obey, teaching them that there are times when they can't talk, there's times when they should not scream. It's not socially acceptable to do that. But you're teaching them that, now of course you gotta teach them that at home first, but then it seems to be refined in church.

Yes, Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, they're going through five or six practice sessions for church every week during our family worship time. And there's a that that can be chaotic. There's a lot of training that happens there. One of the things that I try to help with is just directing.

You know, Katie's pretty, pretty self-managing. Jed can tend to, you know, connect and disconnect. So keeping an eye on him, giving directions. Hey, it's time to stand. We're all standing.

Why are you not standing? Let's talk. You're not moving your mouth or singing. And then I tried to take the two olders who are participating in communion and just I put them on my lap during the communion preparation, one on each knee, and as the pastor is giving us the communion exhortation, I'm repeating core thoughts back to them and making sure that they're really engaged in that part in particular. Oh, that's fantastic.

So just to switch gears for the last couple of minutes, so we're both part of churches that don't leave immediately after the service. Sometimes we're around for hours after the service. So what then? You have kids, you have hours before you're going home, the service is, the structured time has ended, now you're in unstructured time. How in the world do you manage that?

Just Jason, we need a whole session on that subject. Okay. Hey, we'll have you back. Hey, give us the Cliff Notes and then maybe we'll come back. Because this is really an important question.

Yeah, it really is. And it goes sideways all the time in family integrated churches. So do you have a sound bite for us? Well, planning again, and the game plan of, hey, do you have somebody that you're wanting to connect with after church? And who should I take to make sure that that's possible?

Okay, You're going to keep Joey. I'll make sure I keep Bria. And then making sure we communicate clear expectations to our children. You know, you're allowed to do this. I'd like you to stay in this space.

You know, if you have any trouble, come to mommy. Mommy will be here. Maybe for the two-year-old, I'd like you to stay in this section where mommy can see you. Don't leave this room, that kind of thing so that everybody understands what is being expected. And then if that is disobeyed, then there can be a clear understanding of what was done wrong and what should be done differently.

Oh, that's great. And then one last thing I'll say, and that is training our children to meet and show kindness to visitors. Something that we practice at home, don't do it perfectly, but here's how you introduce yourself. All right, there's a new visitor right after the church service. We're going to walk over there.

We're going to meet them. We're going to talk with them, and then you're free to go play. Fantastic. Hey, that's great. Super fresh.

We really appreciate. Great thoughts. I hope that a lot of people will listen to it and just consider how they might up their game, you know, in prioritizing the local church and the worship of God. Really. And there's no greater joy when your kids tell you like, we love going to church.

And if you asked our kids, they would just tell you like, we love going to church. Amen to that. We praise the Lord for that. Yeah, we would always say in the car on the way to church, I was glad when they said unto me, let us go into the house of the Lord. That's how it ought to be.

Well, hey, thank you. Thank you again for giving us this time. Really, really valuable. Appreciate the opportunity to learn from you all and visit with you all today. Good deal.

And thank you for joining us on the Church and Family Life podcast, and we hope you can join us next time. Church and Family Life is proclaiming the sufficiency of Scripture by helping build strong families and strong churches. If you found this resource helpful, we encourage you to check out ChurchandFamilyLife.com