How should a busy father prepare for family worship?

Joel Beeke explains in this video that while fathers often find themselves busy, they should not use that as an excuse for neglecting times of family worship. Instead, he suggests two areas that fathers should focus on to help them better prepare for family worship. First, they ought to be prayerful men who are in frequent communion with God. In addition, fathers should be widely read in all kinds of spiritual and practical matters.

He explains that being well-read and well-versed about their children’s needs will allow fathers to be more effective at leading family worship. Ideally, the father will also get up and read over the chapter beforehand and check a commentary or two. Though the life of a father is often busy, he must always prioritize leading his family in the discussion of God's Word.

2 Timothy 2:15 (NKJV) – “Be diligent to present yourself approved to God, a worker who does not need to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.”

Fathers are busy. They've got a full-time job. They've got all kinds of responsibilities. A lot of the fathers here are elders or deacons or ministers as well. I think the best preparation to really be effective at family worship is to be prayerful yourself and to have a secret life of communion with God and feel the burden of the souls of your children.

And the second probably most important thing is be widely read. Read as much as you can about all kinds of spiritual matters and practical matters and be well versed about your children's needs just through reading and let the family worship flow out of the spontaneity and the overflow of that kind of preparation. Now ideally, of course, a father should, you know, get up 20 minutes early every morning and look at the chapter he's going to do for family worship that evening and spend some time thinking about it, maybe checking a commentary or two. I mean, that would be wonderful. Praise God for fathers that do that.

But most fathers find that very difficult to do. And so I think the overall preparation is important as well.