daddy4ms

Here is an article that I contributed to published in the June/July issue of the Christian Leader.  This article was birthed as a result of a workshop I presented with Jenny Wall, Ken Ediger, & Steve Fast in Oklahoma last summer.  We will be presenting a similar workshop in Omaha this summer.  Hope you enjoy! http://www.usmb.org/parents-hold-key-to-providing-faith-home

Jason Zellmer is pastor of Peine Ridge Church in Wentzville, MO.  I have come to appreciate his thoughts on the church and  family.  His church hosts St. Louis Family Camp.  You can visit his church website here and the camp here . Have you ever felt like your family worship time was monotonous? Do you ever wonder if you children have grown bored with your daily devotions or sensed they’ve lacked focus? We know that the bible is living and active, and that it is only because of our own depravity that the sharpness of scripture could become dull. None the less, we should recognize that supplemental reading can be helpful as a way of keeping our family worship times fresh. The foundational elements of family worship time are bible reading, singing and prayer.  In each of these pillars the focus must remain upon Christ.  In addition to this, catechisms, scripture memorization, and stories can be helpful equipping tools. One of the supple...

Have you been leading family worship or having a spiritual conversation with your child and wonder if they are hearing anything you say?  Do you feel like they are present in the room, but far, far away in their thoughts?  Have you wanted to quit passing on faith in the home because you are sure your kids are not listening? I have a story to tell you.  In Hide N Seek, our mid week program for 4 year olds through 4th grade, we have devotions to complete each week.  They are family driven so the whole family gathers together to read Scripture, pray, and sing.  This past week, the activity was to review the year.  We have been learning more about the ACTS acrostic (Adoration, Confession, Thanksgiving, Supplication).  The kids were to try and remember the five activities we did to help us better understand adoration.  When I originally wrote the devotions, I expected kids to get a few and then look up the rest for review.  However, I praised Go...

Here is a simple idea for families to do on Valentine's Day. Have an adult open in prayer. Then sing a song about God's love for us.  We picked "More Than Conquerors" by Seeds Family Worship. Read one of the many passages of Scripture that talk about God's Love for us.  Here are a few: John 3:16,        1 John 4:7-11, 1 Corinthians 13:4-8. Have the kids make a Valentine to God.  On it, have them list the reasons that they love God.  Or they could also list how they know God loves them.  Another option would be to have them make a Valentine for someone they think might not receive one and then go and deliver it.  Ideas would be an elderly neighbor or someone at a local nursing home.  Close your time in prayer. Note: I ended our time of family worship by giving my wife and kids their own gifts for Valentine's Day.

So, there is a lot of talk right now about the importance of families talking about faith at home. Right now, there are more resources to help in this area than ever before. Many families are realizing the importance of these times and making the decision to start. So, what happens when you decide you are going to do family devotions and the experience is less than desirable? In other words, what happens when family devotions go bad? I happen to be able to speak from experience about this. Recently, I had planned and prepared our time together well to have one of my kids make the experience difficult. Bad attitudes were not the only issue, but it also included verbal distractions. I am not sure anyone else was able to worship that evening. Why do I share this? To realistically explain, that when you decide to do this, there will at times be resistance. Sometimes this resistance can come from yourself, your spouse, or your kids. Know this fact-Satan does not want you personally...

As a family, we are memorizing one Scripture at a time together. This is a way to hold each other accountable. Right now, we are focusing on Philippians 2:3-4. The first simple idea is repetition. We will say the verse several times as we gather together as a family. A twist on this idea is to have your kids come up with an action for words or phrases of the passage. Read through the passage once and then discuss key words. Read it again and have the kids do the actions as you say the word and/or phrases. The second simple idea is making a game or activity out of it. Mitchell is always a fan of this. This week, we have tried two different games to help memorize. The first is to go around the family in a circle and each say one word of the verse until it is complete. When I was a substitute teacher in Iola , they would play a game like this with spelling words. After the last letter, the next person would say Sparkle and the next person was out of the game and would have ...

Over the last few weeks, I have seen God move in some exciting ways. First of all, I attended two seminars (Kansas Strengthening Families Summit & AMFM ) within two weeks. Each had different takes on the area of marriage and family, but each also pointed in a similar direction. For the last few days, I have been sharing with different leaders a vision for strengthening marriages at Hesston MB. I value these conversations because they help tweak what God has put on my heart. I look forward to sharing this direction with the Body of Christ and community of Hesston very soon. It has been a joy to see how God is working and how He is using my gifts and passions to accomplish kingdom work. I also shared several months ago about the "God idea" to write family devotions for Hide N Seek this year. I was starting to worry because the task is so enormous. However, last Friday, I made some great progress and now believe I will finish these devotions in time. They have bee...

I enjoyed this blog post by Jen Wilkin who attends The Village Church. I say amen to much of what she shares! Psalm 34:3 Glorify the LORD with me; let us exalt his name together. I love this verse. When we were married, Jeff and I had it inscribed on the inside of our wedding bands. It summarized so well what we wanted our married life to be about: Glorifying God. Together. As our family grew, so did our desire for this verse to be true of our entire household: glorify the Lord with me - in our home, in our community, in our church. The with me of church has required some intentionality, to say the least. We go to church in a weird place - so many people want to attend worship each week that just getting a seat is a major accomplishment. People are routinely turned away in large numbers from our services. Great problem. To make things weirder we’re heavily populated with twenty-something’s. Neither of these weirds are the bad kind of weird, but they definitely make t...

Practical Ideas for Family Worship Tim Smith Worship Pastor at Mars Hill Church In my previous post, I spoke of the importance of regular times of family worship. I have three daughters aged 5, 6, and 8, and I have failed as much as succeeded. Here are a few things I've learned: 1. Keep it short I would recommend 15-30 minutes, as a general rule. If things are going well, you can always keep the conversation going, but the goal should be brevity. If you make a discussion too long, it will become tedious and can actually turn your kids away from God. This time should be an overflow of all the Scripture, prayer, and discussion going on in the rest of your lives—not the only place where it happens. 2. Read Most importantly, family worship is a time for Scripture. Make sure to read small chunks, maybe only a verse or two, at a time and then unpack it together. You can go through a book of the Bible, pick a verse that applies to the day’s events, or choose s...

Last night, we had a great time during family worship. We did our usual singing and prayer. But we added a game into our time of learning. I had each of three oldest read the following Scriptures: Philippians 1:3; Colossians 3:15-17; Philippians 4:11. We talked about Thanksgiving coming up and our need to be thankful and content. I then had prepared 4 questions for a "Family Feud" type game. The kids had to work together as a family. Any points on the board after three strikes went to the Unthankful Family. All of the questions had to do with being thankful. Here are the questions with answers (you can change them to fit your situation): Thankful for Hesston : Church (42), School (21), House (17), Parks (11), Arboretum (6), & Friends (3) This Thanksgiving I'm Thankful For: God (33), Spouse (21), Parents (17), Kids (9), Family (8), Food (7), & House (5) Things I'm Thankful About My Family: Love me (36), Take care of me (20), Play with me (16), Help me...

As I mentioned in a previous post, we are focusing our family worship for the next few months on missionaries. As we think about the missionaries we personally support as well as our church, we talk about characteristics that they exhibit that we should have as well. We have already talked about making sacrifices and being content. During these times, we have made birthday cards for one missionary and Thanksgiving cards for another. This week, we are talking about telling others about Jesus and spiritual gifts. As we talked about how missionaries share Jesus in other cultures, we talked about how we need to do it in Hesston . Each of three kids looked up one of these verses: Matthew 28:18-20, Romans 10:13-15, and Ephesians 6:19-20. The kids participated in their usual ways as they played the piano, sang songs, and prayed together. We sang one of the kids' new favorite songs "Go" by Seeds Family Worship. When we talk about spiritual gifts, we are going to look at 1 ...

We have decided that we are going to focus on a different missionary that we support or our church supports during our family worship over the next few months. As we share about how they minister in their country or in the United States, we are going to make cards to send to them for birthdays, Thanksgiving, or Christmas. For our teaching time, we are going to look at a particular character trait that we see in that missionary and talk about how it is important in our lives as well. I am excited about this focus and look forward to sharing how it goes. We have already talked about sacrifice and I plan to talk about being content on Tuesday night. Thank you to those who serve God as missionaries!

We have recently just finished learning about the Beatitudes with the kids during family worship. I thought I would share a few things that we did. This is probably more for my information so that I can go back at a later date and see what we have done. Some of the words were hard for the kids to understand as well as the concepts. However, I hope our attempts at making them more understandable will impact their hearts and attitudes. We introduced the topic by heading to Mt. Hesston (a hill used for sledding in our town) one evening. You can see a previous blog post about some of the details from the night. However, Bethany reminded me that I forgot to post how Molly did not hesitate to go up the hill "for worship" instead of playing on the playground. We sat together on the hill and I read Matthew 5:1-12. We talked about how the Beatitudes are attitudes that we should show in our lives. For those new to my blog, here is what we do for family worship: one of the kids will st...

So, I had an idea for family worship on Thursday night. We were getting ready to talk about the Beatitudes during family worship after we had just completed several weeks talking about the 10 Commandments. I thought it would be fun and more meaningful for us to head to Mt. Hesston to read from the Sermon on the Mount. We loaded the whole family and headed to King Park. We were able to get everyone up Mt. Hesston without a stop at the playground. The kids kept asking, why are we here? Then I opened my Bible and read Matthew 5 which includes the Beatitudes. The significance? It starts out Jesus went up on the mountainside and Mt. Hesston is the closest thing we have to a mountain in town. We briefly talked about some of the attitudes Jesus wants us to have based on these verses. However, I would say that this was not our most successful times of family worship. Mitchell gets to to the top of the hill and decides he has to go to the bathroom. He then "begins to fall...

On Tuesday night, we had gathered together for our time of family worship. We have been exploring different ways to do this over the last few months. I finally decided to focus on Deuteronomy 6:4-9. We hope to memorize this passage as a family. I then told the kids that we would be looking at the "commandments" mentioned in these verses. So, we are starting with the most logical place and looking at the 10 Commandments. I started thinking about ways to make this more interactive with the kids. So, I decided that each night we would look at one of the commandments and the kids are to come up with a creative way to explain or teach that commandment. I was so excited on Tuesday when I got home from work because the kids were practicing their activity for our family worship. They could not wait to get to family worship that night. Mitchell prepared a skit about worshipping the bear god or the only true God. Mackenzie made up a song. Megan did a dance. Molly joined in ...

This afternoon, I spent a couple of hours reading at Lincoln Perk. For those of you not from Hesston , it is a great coffee place with great atmosphere. I will often see at least one person I know when I am there. I have learned this wonderful practice from my fellow pastors. Thanks Brad and Steve! I was amazed at how much I learned today. As I mentioned before, I am reading two books on parenting right now. Both have given me a lot to think about and put into practice. I will finish both of them within the week or so. The first is Parenting is Heart Work by Turansky and Miller. The second is Family Driven Faith by Voddie Baucham . I wanted to share some great quotes and ideas with all of you today. Parenting is Heart Work This chapter focused on helps in correcting or disciplining your child. "Repentance requires the following six steps: 1-Settle Down and Stop Fighting, 2-Be Willing To Admit You've Done Something Wrong, 3-Realize There's Something Different Yo...

I am excited about this weekend as we are having Parent/Child Dedication at our church and Molly is going to be dedicated. It will also be my first opportunity as Associate Pastor to be involved in this special event. I am enjoying meeting with families to talk about the significance of their role in the faith development of their children. Let me share a little about what I am learning about family worship. I had heard about this concept before, but only used in a negative sense and most often associated with the word, "boring." I also realized that as a father I am to be actively involved in the spiritual training and instruction of my children. I cannot delegate this important responsibility to the church alone. But I have also come to understand that the "how to's " are lacking. It seems the church has challenged the family in this area, but resources are not readily available. However, I discovered several resources that are helpful. First, I send a...