God-centered, Christ-exalting worship is supremely significant in the life of our church. It is in many ways our identity. It’s when our shared life as believers in Jesus is expressed. It’s a time especially devoted to God’s glory, majesty, and power. We need to be worshipping together. Any way you slice it, most current Sunday schedules foster an environment where our teenagers do their thing in another part of the campus, while Mom and Dad learn on their own. And where Sunday School can become a substitute for family worship. The Biblical pattern for worship is that parents train their children by example. In a culture that aggressively fragments families, should we not be a community that brings families together for the most important hour of the week? Should our mothers and fathers not be showing their children the delight that is theirs simply to be in the presence of the Lord’s redeemed people? Should not our children regularly see the joy on our faces as we come before Christ in praise and worship … and as we bow before His holy Word? Shouldn’t we be teaching our children our songs and our testimonies and our history … and thus actively shaping the church’s future through them?

You have about 650 of those opportunities with your child between the ages of 4 and 17. Don’t miss one of them if you can help it. It’s well worth a noisy interruption of the service from time to time! We can all grow in our willingness to be “inconvenienced” by rightly training our children to worship the Lord – and the benefits will be enormous in all our lives. Your children can handle more than you think – and they’re absorbing more than you think. And we’re going to work very diligently to make sure that all of our worship services reflect time-honored tradition while encouraging the youthful participation – and the energy that comes with it – that will help us express a truly robust love for the Lord Jesus Christ! Way back in Deuteronomy 6, we see the primacy of parents’ modeling worship and devotion to God in both teaching and example. God only deepens this conviction as His story of redeeming grace unfolds in Scripture. It’s critical that we embrace our responsibilities to one another in this regard because … Worship done God’s way produces a spiritual unity that can’t be undermined. That’s why the writer to the Hebrews (10:24-25) warns us not to neglect corporate worship.