There’s some encouraging movement in the Southern Baptist Convention in regards to Family Worship. These are resolutions that all Christians can and should embrace. If you are a Christian, I strongly urge you to read over this and strive to make it happen for your family and other Christian families that you know.

Southern Baptist Seminary is addressing some of the shortcomings of the age-based ministry approach that has had some serious short-falls in equipping parents to minister effectively to their children. They have a portion of their Southern seminary website that is dedicated to family ministries. Here’s a short video that explains why they developed and are moving towards what they call a Family Equipping Model. I have just begun to digest all the various information on this topic.

As a parent of two children, I’m always interested to see the routine of fellow parents. Here’s one that showed up on the Resurgence blog: Justin Hyde, How I Pastor My Family. It has some resemblance to what we do at our house, but after reading it, I realized that I still have some things to work on. This article is particularly relevant to fathers; but I recommend every mother and father to read this and reflect on how you can improve your time with your children. 

It is very common among Christians to recognize children as a blessing; but there is another image of children that describes them as olive trees. I found this imagery described in the following quote.

“There is also great fruitfulness that comes with children. One Scripture that imparts a vision for parenting is Psalm 128:3. Children are called olive plants. Someday olive plants become olive trees, and olive trees were a sign of prosperity in the life of ancient Israel. Olive oil, olive wood, and the fruit of an olive tree were precious commodities. Olive oil, for example, was used for eating, illumination, and anointing. Historian Will Durant, in The Story of Civilization, says an olive plant “takes sixteen years to come to fruit, forty years to reach perfection.” Though the wait was long, no one doubted that the productivity that came out of future olive plants was worth the time and the effort spent in cultivating those plants. Children are olive plants. It may take years until we see the fruit, and even longer until they mature and reach maximum fruitfulness. Yet the time and effort spent cultivating our own olive plants is well worth it. Not to mention that the inheritance is for many generations to come (Ps. 78:5,6).”1

In the struggles of daily life, it’s easy to focus on the details of daily living and loose sight of the long-term vision and goals for our children. The days are evil (Eph 5:16) and soon turn into years of idleness if we are not careful to work diligently (Deut 6:7) to teach our children so that they grow up like a fruitful and productive olive tree for the glory of God.

Jonathan Edwards was one of those great men of God who not only labored intensely for the care of people’s souls, but also had a home life that was exemplary.

“Remember your leaders, those who spoke to you the word of God. Consider the outcome of their way of life, and imitate their faith. ” (Heb 13:7)

Jonathan Edwards is certainly a man who’s faith we should imitate. I’ve included here, a section from memoirs of Jonathan Edwards that talks about his home life. Download the PDF in the endnotes section at the bottom of the article.

Mark Driscol’s Series on parenting is very helpful, fun to listen to and jam packed with solid information. He has a series of four sermons that I’ve downloaded. I am providing the links to the files here. So far, I’ve only listened to sermon on Instructing Children and Correcting Children and they are well worth the time to listen to again and again.