Growing up as a pastor’s kid in Chuncheon, South Korea, I rarely prayed with my family at home outside of mealtimes. It became even more difficult to pray together when my family lived separately from one another. I was 12 years old when my whole family moved to the US for my music education, but a year later, my dad returned to Korea to continue his work in ministry.
When my mom, my brother, and I visited my dad during our long summer breaks, we would occasionally join him for daily 5 a.m. prayer services at church. Even as I rubbed sleep from my eyes and stifled yawns, seeing my parents earnestly praying and worshiping God before the sun rose left a strong impression on me.
I learned to pray at church, and I learned to worship God at church. At home, my dad would lay his hands on me and pray if I had a fever or pray for me over the phone when I faced conflicts with my friends. We did devotions individually, but my family rarely gathered together to worship God outside of church.
I didn’t learn about family worship until I was pursuing a doctorate of worship studies in my late 20s. By then, I was married and planning to start a family, so the topic caught my eye. Donald S. Whitney’s book Family Worship listed Scripture passages such as Deuteronomy 6:7, which called on God’s people to impress his commandments on their children: “Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up.” Whitney made it clear that God’s intention was for families to worship together in the home.
“It is unlikely that exposure to the church once or twice a week will impress your children enough with the greatness and glory of God that they will want to pursue him once they leave your home,” he wrote. “That is why family worship is so important.”
Family worship hadn’t been prioritized in the Asian churches I’d attended or visited, as ministry often takes precedence over the family. Churches are busy with activities and services that pull parents away from their families rather than bringing them together. Parents also often work long hours in Asia, leaving them with little time to spend with their kids.
Yet some Asian church leaders are awakening to the importance of families taking the proactive step of discipling their kids. The Asia Evangelical Alliance (AEA) named its 2024 General Assembly “Disciple or Die,” sending the message that if believers don’t concentrate on discipling their children, their churches will disappear.
In the Philippines, pastors are often seen as the sole spiritual leaders of the flocks, so Christians often don’t see the need for further discipleship in the home, Peter Tan-Chi, pastor of the megachurch Christ’s Commission Fellowship, told CT in an email.
“Many parents rely on church programs or Sunday school for their children’s spiritual growth, but this overlooks the importance of family-led discipleship as described in the Old Testament,” Tan-Chi said.
He tells his parishioners that “every family is a discipleship group” where parents can model their faith through praying, having honest discussions, and serving together.
Other churches in the region have also started to step up, said Gwen de Rozario, director of AEA’s Children Commission. At Pungsunghan Church in Suwon, a city south of Seoul, families discuss the coming Sunday’s Bible passage before hearing it preached from the pulpit. Then the church meets in age-specific groups to study the passage, and families gather throughout the week for devotions. “Parents who were authoritative have begun to talk with their children and understand them better,” de Rozario said.
My husband and I created our own traditions when our first child was born. While rocking our newborn baby, we would sing “Jesus Loves Me,” read a short passage in the Bible, and pray together. Sometimes our family worship was interspersed with my daughter’s piercing cries, yet it became her sweet bedtime routine. When our daughter became a toddler, we started reading a children’s Bible to her and singing worship songs with body motions. She would giggle and laugh with joy during our family worship.
But when our family of three became four, making time for this spiritual discipline became a struggle as we juggled the needs of a toddler and a newborn. Some days, we would run out of time trying to get the kids to bed. When guests came over, we would forget to do our worship time. When we moved to Malaysia, where my husband’s demanding job would keep him as late as 9 p.m., the regular routine of daily family worship seemed impossible. Before I realized it, we had stopped doing family worship for three years.
In 2024, I attended a bimonthly prayer meeting for moms at my children’s school in Penang, Malaysia. That day, fellow mom Margaret Emis brought laminated Scripture cards praising God for the work he had done. She said that these cards, which helped her kids memorize Bible verses and guided their prayer time, had been part of her family’s worship sessions for 15 years.
Fifteen years? I was amazed. I sat down with Margaret later to learn more about how she managed to keep up the practice amid the busyness of life. She said it started when she read John MacArthur’s What the Bible Says about Parenting. One quote stood out to her.
“Whenever outside influences shape a child’s character more than the parents, the parents have failed in their duties,” he wrote. “God has placed in our hands the responsibility of bringing our children up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord, and we will give account to God for our stewardship of this great gift.”
The words pierced Margaret’s heart. Her kids were still young, but she wanted to pass down her Christian faith to them. Realizing that she needed to actively disciple her kids, Margaret decided that she would do family worship every day.
Margaret prepares breakfast by 6 a.m. so that her husband and her three daughters can do family worship at the table. She chose breakfast time because it was the only meal that the whole family ate together every day. For an hour, the whole family reads the Bible, learns about God, sings worship songs, and prays.
Over the years, Margaret and her husband taught their children the attributes of God, read through the Puritan prayers in The Valley of Vision, prayed for unreached people groups, and recited the questions and answers of the Westminster catechism. Margaret creates the Bible reading plans and finds material as her husband leads the worship time.
Still, some challenges remain: It’s difficult to have the discipline to do it daily. She must make sure her children, who are now in high school, go to bed early. She wakes up around 5 a.m. not only to have breakfast ready but also to spend alone time with God to set the right attitude going into the day. “Am I going to be grumpy?” she mused. “Or am I going to be thankful that God saved me and let the joy of the Lord be my strength and serve my family?”
Another friend, Leon Lim, a pastor in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, leads his own version of family worship in his home. Whenever we stayed at his house or his family visited us, they invited us to join in their family worship.
At Leon’s home, his whole family, including his elderly mother, brother, wife, and two kids—ages 4 and 8—gather every night at 9 p.m. For 15 minutes or so, they sing a worship song, read Scripture, pray, sing “Kyrie Eleison” (a liturgy asking God for mercy), pray the Lord’s Prayer, and end with a blessing: “Almighty God, Creator Christ, and Holy Spirit bless and preserve you. Amen.”
“We go book by book in the Bible, and the kids really want to read the Bible,” Leon said. “It was exciting to see their love of reading Scripture.” They have not missed a single day of doing family worship since starting in 2019. Sometimes they would do it in the car, sometimes through Zoom if one family member was away.
Although Leon’s parents are both pastors, he had never seen family worship modeled in the home. He noted that “the call towards the father being the spiritual leader of the home and to lead the spiritual lives of their families [in Malaysia] is still rather weak,” with believers instead relying on the church to spiritually form their children.
Initially, he struggled to know how to do family worship. But now it’s a time his family looks forward to “as we always find refuge in God no matter what the circumstances of our day or season may be.”
These two families motivated me to ask once again how my own family could worship God at home.
Whitney, the author of Family Worship, suggests having a regular time each day for the practice and choosing a time when the family is already accustomed to gathering. For us, that meant around the kids’ bedtimes. We sit on our bed and take turns reflecting on the day and how we have seen God at work.
Recently, my seven-year-old daughter said she saw God at work when my husband prayed for a family member’s salvation. My four-year-old chimed in: “God is my healer. His name is Rapha!” Their answers surprised us and made us smile. We would then read the children’s Bible, thank God for how he has worked in the day, and sing a song of blessing.
Family worship can still be a challenge for my family. Our four-year-old son will often run away in the middle of the worship time. When we come home late and are rushed for bedtime, we skip the song and just pray. But my husband and I are striving to regularly worship God with our children because, as Whitney wrote, “God deserves to be worshiped daily in our homes by our families.”
Additional reporting by Bruce Barron
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