Early this morning Bryce Butler sent me an article from John Piper on leading family devotions with the very young. The Desiring God site has the complete article and audio to download. Here are some of the best excerpts:
From the family standpoint there would always be a time to meet. It was at the breakfast table in those early days. So you have a child who is now rested—at least it’s the way it worked for our boys and Talitha—they were rested and had a full tummy. So they were relatively happy.
And at that moment Daddy gets out a big book. And he reads from it, a paragraph maybe. This little child doesn’t understand anything I’m saying. He’s six months old, or nine months, or a year.
He doesn’t understand anything I’m saying, but he’s learning big time what is going on here: he’s watching daddy take leadership; he’s noticing a book; he’s hearing reading; he’s watching them pray afterwards; and he’s learning massively important things before he understands a word that is going on here…
You’re not demanding faith from this little pagan, because he’s not ready even to come to those terms. You’re doing teaching: you’re building and your exulting and your praying and your asking, and he’s watching all this happen as you build that into his life.
By John Piper. © Desiring God. Website: desiringGod.org
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
While I respect Piper and appreciate his desire in this to help families understand that discipleship begins at the very early stages of childhood, I fear that this kind of prescriptive approach to telling people how to facilitate spiritual development in children can be demotivating and misses the point of what it means to pass on faith to children. It’s not simply setting a regular time to read from the Bible and pray. What about the other 23.9 hours of the day? What about living out a holistic faith that permeates every aspect of life from home to work to church to play to the rest of life. I fear that we focus so much on the act of family devotions that we miss that point of living out a life of devotion to God. We need to be aware of the “hidden curriculum” that we are teaching children… that is what we teach by what how we live our lives in front of our children from day to day. For me, it is more important as a parent and in giving advice to parents to help children see that God is an integral part of everything we do in life — he is ever present and we live in constant awareness of his presence whether or not he “feels” close or not. What’s missing in the lives of families is not a family devotion time. What’s missing in families is the encouragement and empowerment to live out fully integrated lives for God.
Yes, reading the Bible as a family is important (and looks different from family to family). Yes, praying as a family is important. But more important is living out the adventure God has before us as a family and journeying along together as a family… whatever that may look like for your family.
Henry, I think that there is definitely a balance that is needed… just like with adults. There is always the danger for church people that Christianity will come to be a compartment that fits neatly into an hour and a half box on Sunday mornings. We certainly want Christians in our churches that understand faith to be all of life and not just when we gather. On the other hand, we shouldn’t neglect our public church gathering. This serves as one of the primary God-given catalysts for living life as a Christian. After all, when we gather we hear the gospel word (read, preached, and sung), and we meet with the gospel community. When we assemble together, we “spur one another on to love and good deeds” (Hebrews 10:24-25).
The same is true in our homes. At Sojourn, we believe that parents are front line of ministry to kids–not our Sunday bible classes or public church gatherings. Parents pastor their homes. So, we encourage parents to gather for times of family worship with their kids. Certainly this looks different in every family. You’re right. And certainly this is just a small percentage of the time. But we hope family worship is a catalyst for those “God moments” that occur throughout life–meal time, drive time, bedtime, and in the morning (Deuteronomy 6:7). The gospel is like oxygen. We should be prepared to breathe it in and breathe it out where ever we are. But the truths we learn together when we gather for a devotional time give us a reference point to refer back to when we’re in the car, on the playground, or in the back yard.
What can be dangerous about Piper (or Driscoll, or McKnight, or whomever else) is the way that these men sometimes rise to celebrity status in our churches and we somehow think (even if only unconsciously), “The Kennedy family needs to be just like the Piper family.” I’ve learned that God gives our families grace to “be themselves” to his glory.
I don’t actually think Piper was trying to be prescriptive here. Rather, he was giving concrete examples from his family’s life. I found it helpful, because it is easier for me to abstract concepts from his concrete examples and say, “This will work for me. This won’t.” Than to figure out concrete things from more abstract teaching.