What does a Christian family look like?  It’s a good question.  Some homeschooling dads were hanging out talking and one of them shared that as a first generation Christian, no one had ever told him what a Christian family should look like.  It wasn’t until recently, after he started homeschooling, that he started hearing about things like family worship and what his role as a father should be in the life of his family.  And that comment made me finally get around to starting this blog.  Because unfortunately, I think that is a really common problem today, even among second and third generation Christians.

I was fortunate to have parents who were saved and my father was passionate about Scripture and he would teach us and ask us questions and take us to Bible conferences and Creation seminars.  So, I was blessed to have a good foundation.  But I have to admit, when I first had my children, and we were sending them to public school, we thought the “Christian” thing to do was to get our kids to Church as much as possible; making sure they did Sunday School, AWANA, VBS, and all the rest.  We wanted to make sure that we were getting them plenty of “good stuff”  to counter all the junk we knew they would face at school.  Sure we prayed with them and stuff, but for us, a major part of being a Christian was being at church when the doors were open.  And I think many Christians feel that way.  But then something happened.  We decided to homeschool our kids and everything changed.  Now I’m not saying homeschooling will necessarily change your life or your kid’s lives.  It’s not a magic formula.  But as we started researching homeschooling, we came across several ministries that support homeschoolers and we began to learn a lot.  We were already feeling the burden that our children’s academic training was in our hands.  A lot was riding on us, we were responsible!  But as we researched, we realized something else we had always been responsible for and had not fully appreciated….our children’s spiritual training!  We began to fully comprehend that our children would learn from US what being a follower of Christ is all about.   They would be spending the majority of their time with us and for better or worse, they would first come to the understanding of what Christianity is all about through watching us.  Wow.  Suddenly Deuteronomy 6:6-7 took on flesh and blood:  “and these words that I command you today shall be on your heart.  You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise.” (ESV)

This is when revival came to the MacDowell house.  We began to think about what we wanted to instill in our daughters.  What were we showing them now?  What compromises were we living with?  What worldly and corrupting ways were we allowing in our home and lives?   Things began to change.  And when I share these, please realize that we don’t sit in judgment of others who may do things differently or have different convictions.  As we tell our children, this is how we do things because these are our convictions and every family is different.  But for us, we got rid of TV because we viewed it as mostly negative, or at the very least mind numbing and robbing them of their creativity.  After a few years we did get a new TV, but we use it sparingly and we don’t have Cable.  We also became very careful about what music we would let them listen to and what books they would be allowed to read.  We didn’t want them having a Secular Worldview poured into them as a form of entertainment.  We didn’t want them reading books that encouraged bad behavior or attitudes or made kids seem like heroes who had to put up with  “stupid parents”.  Instead we sought out books that called sin what it was, and championed the values found in God’s Word.  And because of our rapidly changing views on dating (that’s another blog), we also did not want them feeding into the dating mentality and being silly about boys, but rather to view purity as a high priority.

We just began to look at everything with new eyes.  We started to question why we did certain things and make sure that we were doing things purposefully. We changed our entertainment, like I mentioned, but also how we celebrated holidays. We got rid of some of the fluff and commercialization that distracted from Christmas and Resurrection Sunday.  We focused on Christ leading up to these holidays.  We also were much more careful about making sure we had our children’s hearts so that we could most effectively influence them in the knowledge and admonition of the Lord.  We sought to protect them from bad influences, knowing that their own sinful hearts was plenty to deal with rather than the added burden of people encouraging them to do wrong in ways they hadn’t thought of yet.  Some people might look at some of these things and say we are sheltering our children and they would be right.  Some would say it’s not good to shelter children too much and they would be right.  The question is how much is too much?  Gregg Harris is a homeschooling dad who uses the metaphor of the greenhouse to explain how and why we should shelter our children.  http://www.hslda.org/courtreport/V25N3/V25N301.asp

(This is a link to an interview that HSLDA had with him.  The Greenhouse, the Cold Frame, & the Field is right in the beginning.    I can’t state it any better and he certainly knows what he’s talking about, so I’ll just let him have the last word on that subject.)

To sum up, our standards and convictions had changed. Our priority was raising our girls to be godly young women. And we now realized we must live our lives in such a way that we were pointing them to Christ.  And one of the first things we did to point them to Christ was to make time regularly for family worship.  What is family worship?  It’s very similar to the corporate worship that we have on Sunday.  We take time to sing, to pray, and to read God’s Word and dwell on it as a family.  The purpose is for us to put Christ first and remember as a family that everything we have comes from the Lord and it should be our highest priority to continually give Him honor and glory.  This type of attitude really can set the tone for family life.  Primarily, it helps to set our minds on Christ.  But you are also showing your children that God is not just to be worshipped on Sundays, but everyday.   And  reading God’s Word always bears fruit, because we inevitably see areas that we or our children are failing in, and it is a time to confess sin and seek forgiveness, or offer instruction straight from Scripture.   It is also discipling our children and  ourselves as we read and learn from God’s Word, which we know is living and active and will have something new to teach us or remind us of.  In addition to all of those wonderful things, you are giving your children a pattern, an example, for how to conduct their families when they have them.

As homeschoolers, my wife does 99% of the teaching and we use curriculum that is Christ-centered.  And in the course of the day she is going to be teaching our children biblically.  It is one of the greatest advantages of homeschooling, and of course she should be doing that.  But for family worship, when we come together, I lead our family  because leading family worship is the responsibility of the father.  Why do I say the father?  Because the Bible says so.  In his book, Family Shepherds, Voddie Baucham says, “The role of men in their families is so important that God honored it by conferring upon us his own title, Father.” I find that simple statement to be very powerful.   The Bible clearly teaches male headship in the home.  The foundation is set in the very beginning of Genesis, and patriarchy is seen through the rest of the Old Testament.  And that design is seen clearly taught in the New Testament as well… 1 Cor. 11:3, Eph 5:21-33, Col. 3:18-19, Titus 2:5, and 1 Peter 3:1-7.  Fathers are responsible to lead their families spiritually.  In addition to the verses I just shared, Eph. 6:4 also addresses this, not to mention the pattern in Scripture as a whole.  The book of Proverbs is given in the narrative of a Father passing on wisdom to his son.  In both the Old and New Testament, God shows one of His greatest concerns is for the fatherless and the widow.  The role of the Husband and Father is a crucial one, and we must take that responsibility seriously and we should also be looking to help out those families who are fatherless, but more on that some other time.

Hopefully, in that last paragraph I conveyed to you the significance of the father.   But what if the father is newly saved?  What if he’s not, but he really doesn’t know as much as he should?  What if he feels unqualified?  There’s a saying, ‘God doesn’t call the qualified, He qualifies the called.’  And if you’re a father, you’re called!  Proverbs 1:7a says, “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge”.  If you are saved, you know the first key thing your family needs to know and be reminded of….the Gospel.  After that, to lead your family, you only need to be a day ahead of them.  As you learn by reading God’s Word and meditating on it, you share what you learn with your wife and children.  There are study Bibles and commentaries out there that can assist you in study and of course you should be part of a local congregation and developing relationships with mature believers who know the Word and can help answer questions that you or your family might come across.  Another great tool is Catechism.  I always thought of this as a bad thing.  I was taught that Catholics used it in the place of the Bible, and while that may be true for some, it doesn’t make catechism a bad thing.  It’s actually a great way to familiarize yourself with some basic truths and doctrines that the Bible teaches.  I found that while many people may know some Bible stories and some of the popular teachings in the Word, too many don’t have a big picture that connects all the dots.  Catechizing is a great way to lay a foundation for the whole family.

And while the Bible teaches the father is responsible here, if the father is unsaved or unwilling, then the mother of course should lead family worship to be the example of what Christianity looks like in the home.  Woe to that father, though, if he be saved, but unwilling to lead his family spiritually.  The  poor example he gives his children will be detrimental to their spiritual health and he will be called to account for that one day.

So, family worship.  Reading God’s Word, singing to the Lord together, and praying for each other and for others.  These are the components of  family worship.  The idea of leading the family in regular worship was seen first by the patriarchs who would build an altar to the Lord to worship Him with their family.  And while we no longer need to offer blood sacrifices because of Jesus, we still need to worship Him daily.  Deut. 6:6-9 teaches us that this is an everyday occurrence.  This is part of how we remember Him and disciple our children.  And, by the way, this should make times of corporate worship with the rest of the church body, just a natural extension of our family life.  We are simply just doing it in a larger setting with our “extended family” in Christ.

When you are putting Christ first in your family, you will be making His Word a priority…learning it, meditating on it, and memorizing it; you should be applying it to your life and to the lives of your children.  2 Tim. 3:16,17 says, “All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work.”  Learning God’s Word as a family and using it to disciple the members of your family, will bear fruit, and will distinguish your family as followers of Christ.   As Christians we should have peace as we rest in the sovereignty of God.  We are called to love another, especially the brethren, and we are called to share the Gospel.  And just to remind you and myself…actions speak louder than words, but words are still necessary.  The Gospel is Good News…you can live because of the good news, but people need to hear it, or they’ll just think you’re really good and moral and not realize that we and they are lost without Jesus.

So what does a Christian family look like?  They look like people who live their lives in devotion to Christ, because He has given them life.  They live according to their roles as taught in Scripture.  This article was somewhat general, with only some specifics relating to fathers.  The reason being, it’s already long, and I wanted to offer a good starting point for families.  In a future blog I will address some specifics about the roles of men and women in the home.   But for now, if your main priority up to this point was getting the kids to church, I hope I have given you something to think about.  I hope this will help point you in the direction of how to start focusing on Christ at home as a family, and by doing that, I trust it will lead to the right things starting to fall into place.

I need to take a moment and plug Family Shepherds by Voddie Baucham.  Voddie also has other books that are very good, but I would recommend fathers to start with Family Shepherds.  I have drawn heavily from his teachings on a few topics.  While researching all this, I have listened to a lot of speakers and read a lot of authors.  Voddie is my personal favorite, because I think he is spot-on just about every time, and he makes these subjects easy to understand.  So, for further reading, Family Shepherds!  You can also find clips of him on YouTube and SermonAudio.

We will put on a page for additional resources regarding roles of Husbands/Fathers and Wives/Mothers and Christian parenting and homeschooling.  These have been a blessing to us in the last six years and we are sure it will be a blessing to others.