Worshiping together as a family doesn’t happen by accident — it begins long before the service starts. 

In this podcast, hosts Scott Brown and Jason Dohm introduce the new We Worship Together Starter Kit and share practical ways parents can help their children prepare for, participate in, and reflect on weekly worship in the local church. From cultivating joyful anticipation before the service to discussing the sermon afterward, they explain how faithful preparation and follow-up can help children grow to love Christ and His church. Whether you’re just beginning this journey or have worshiped together as a family for years, these simple, biblical tools can help you engage more intentionally and make the most of every Lord’s Day. 

Ready to put these principles into practice? Download our free We Worship Together Starter Kit and discover simple, biblical tools to help your family prepare for, participate in, and grow from the gathered worship of the church.   

Thanks for checking out the podcast. Just a quick reminder, not to use this as a replacement for the good pastoral leadership and teaching in your local church, but really just an encouragement for quiet faithfulness through the sufficiency of Scripture. Of Scripture. So Jason, like 25 years ago, we launched a family integrated church right here in Wake Forest, North Carolina. It's been a quarter of a century we've been at.

A quarter of a century. The first decade, at least decade and a half, it was so controversial. We were called a cult for doing this and stuff like that. It was rough stuff. And then most people calmed down.

And then most people calmed down. Even so much, when Vodi Bakham wrote his book, Family Driven Faith in 2007, he said, the tide is turning. And I think the tide was beginning to turn and people were beginning to acknowledge that actually there's biblical foundation to this, that the only observable kind of worship in the Bible that you see is generational worship. You don't see generationally divided worship anywhere in the Bible. On the other end, at the same time, you only see generationally united worship.

That's the only observable pattern. So that's what we've been saying. And now we're engaging in a campaign to put some good tools into the hands of parents to just go the next mile. Yeah, we still think it's important and we still think there are lots of churches that really should embrace it because it is the biblical pattern. And one interesting thing that's happened, I think, in the last 10 years, is many, many pastors have changed their minds.

And particularly young pastors, pastors in their 20s, 30s, and 40s. Many of them are saying, I want to plant a family integrated church or I need to transform the church that I'm in and morph it to more age-generational worship. So there's a We Worship Together starter kit. It's got seven things in it. I won't go through them line by line.

I do wanna touch on a couple of them while we're talking. But again, it gives tools to parents. Now, the church that I'm serving has never been anything ever but a family integrated church. We planted the church in that state. But I want our parents to have this.

I was on the website and you can get this starter kit with just your name and an email address and the starter kit will get sent to you. I asked for it. I'm going to be telling our parents, I think you should get it. It'll help you to prepare for Sunday, to squeeze the most out of Sunday, and then to do things after the service happens on Sunday to kind of drive the nail home. Yeah.

Yeah, I think that's so important. And parents need to really stand up and inspire their children to do this, to be united in the most important thing that a family ever does together, and that is to worship God. And it takes tremendous effort actually and vision for parents to do this well so that their kids aren't bored in church and that type of thing. And it takes forethought, it takes follow-up, it takes shepherding, it takes taking them along the way and really exalting in what God has exalted in the worship of God. To have a real vision for what it means to engage your children in the singing that takes place in the church.

This is so pivotal. The praying that takes place, even to have your kids be excited that this is a place of prayer. This is a place of fellowship where you have the buzzing noise of fellowship in a church. And then the sound of preaching, the children, they understand what's happening. God is speaking, but parents need to be on deck to really help their children understand how significant it is that we are a praying people.

We are a people of the Word. We're marking out the territory of God in our family and in our church through preaching and singing and all these ways that we do battle in the culture. And if your kids are going to be with you and you want the service to be great, you have to start before the service. So in the starter kit, the number two thing is a Sunday preparation checklist. So just give me a thing or two that helps with the service when you start before the service.

Mark Bailey That is so critical to prepare children for this. I think it starts with saying, I was glad when they said unto me, let us go into the house of the Lord. It begins with the gladness to be participating in such a lofty thing called the worship of God in all of its elements. I love the terminology, the ordinary means of grace, but they're so powerful. So children need to have a vision for that, but it has to come out of a heart of joy and affection for the preaching, for the prayers, for the fellowship.

You should get your kids jacked up about this. So you want to have a great disposition. And that is contagious when mom and dad can't wait to go be among the people of God to worship God. It does rub off on kids. So we do want to give them that disposition.

There are also some really just very, the most practical things like seating arrangement. Why does that matter? Oh yes. If you have multiple children, you know that if I said this one next to that one, we're not going to have a good service. This one needs to be on this side of me and that one needs to be on the other side of me.

But there are just very practical things to think through before the service that will help the service be better for them and better for you and better for the people on the road behind you. Yeah. No, that's really, really important. But that has to do with forethought. Right.

Yeah. You can't start thinking about this when the service starts, you're in trouble. Here's another one in the starter kit, number five, after church discussion. Talk about that. Right.

Well, it's always helpful to review. That's how we learn is by reviewing the things that we heard and saw and experienced. And that can happen on the way home in the car. That can happen. In our family, we do it at dinner when we have dinner at night.

On Sunday night, we go around and talk about the sermon. We talk about the sermon or sermons that we heard. That's pretty much what we do. But that's a way to review it. Sure.

Repetition, all parents know this repetition is always good and helpful. It also though, sets an expectation for your kids that this is something we're going to talk about afterwards. So it's important that I pay attention now because these are things I'm going to be asked questions about this after the fact. That helps kids to stay locked in on what's actually happening. Yeah.

Do you want your kids growing up thinking that you just heard a sermon and it just went right over your head and you never thought about it again? I mean, is that the best thing? No, of course it's not. And I think all of our parents have found that they were so surprised at how much even their small kids were retaining. Because they might be drawing or something that you've provided to help them in the sermon, you thought that their ears weren't activated, but you find they were doing a lot more than just drawing.

They were absorbing way more than you anticipated that they were. Yeah, kids understand a lot more than what they can articulate. But they'll often pop it out and articulate some remarkable things that you never thought cleared their head when they heard it. Yeah. So parents, we want to encourage you, take your kids, have them with you by your side when you're worshiping God, do it with gusto so that your disposition towards the worship of God is contagious And then do the practical things before, during, and afterwards that help this be a great time every week for you and your kids.

And hey, you started by saying we've been at this for 25 years. Looking through the campaign has helped me want to reengage this in a more proactive way, even though we've been at it a long time. It's good to return to the first principles for sure. Yeah, absolutely. And we've got resources for that.

Years ago, I wrote a book called A Weed in the Church, which really diagnoses the problem and really casts a vision for really the beauty of age-integrated church life. And then later, The Family at Church, How Parents Are Tour Guides for Joy, This is really a practical nuts and bolts thing on how you engage your children in the worship of God. And plus this kit that we're releasing is a summary form of all of those things. Yeah. The final thing in the kit is an ebook of the family at church.

So you get that just as part of the starter kit. You'll have that in your email. There you go. Okay. All right.

It's a blessing when families worship God together. God has arranged the simplest things to grow your family in the most important things. And it's slow growth. It's like a slow growth pine. It's strong.

We grow just by one deposit, one drip at a time. And that's why it's so important that parents are very proactive to bring their children into the worship of God, to help them anticipate it, to help them experience it, and then help them to ruminate upon it. And Scott, so we started this over 25 years ago. My oldest was five years old When we planted our first family integrated church and started worshiping God altogether as families. Looking back now, having put six children through that, I'm so thankful we did what we did.

I'm not sorry in looking for a different way to go about it. I'm very thankful for how engaged it helped Janet and I to be in the personal discipleship of our own children. Here's the deal, all of our kids, they love the Church of Jesus Christ. They do. That's true.

And now they're in their 20s and 30s, and I've got one in the 40s. And they love the Church because they always love the Church. Hey, so go out there and get the starter kit. I think it'll be really helpful and encouraging, and then it'll be a long-term blessing for you and your family. 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.