These household worship guides are written to complement the Lord’s Day sermons at Springs Reformed Church by focusing the church members’ hearts, minds, and lives throughout the week on the preaching passage and connecting household worship with the church’s gathered worship.
Family worship doesn't have to be complicated. One father* put it this way:
The back of my shampoo bottle says, “Lather, rinse, repeat.” Simple enough that even I can do it. Though family worship may be a bit more complicated than shampooing hair, it ought not to be rated with “home dentistry” in the scale of difficulty.
If you could buy family worship in the store, it would come in the form of a Bible, and the directions would simply say, “Read, pray, repeat.” Men^ should gather their families at least once daily. They should read a portion of the Scriptures to them. And they should pray with them. There need be no fireworks or pizzazz to keep the kids interested. There needs to be only a father with a heart-love for God–who desires to see that love appropriated by his children.
Read, pray, repeat.
^Fathers leading their family in worship is always the goal. When, in the Lord’s providence, the father is absent or uninterested, a godly mother will lead her children. In an extended household, mature members may share leading household worship.
I attended the Reformed Presbyterian Theological Seminary for both my MDiv (1991) and my DMin (2025). I was ordained as a pastor in the Reformed Presbyterian Church of North America in 1992.
I have a passion for helping families discover the joy of worshiping together. Through Worship Connected, I provide weekly Bible reading plans and resources designed specifically for household worship (often called family devotions) that are connected to the preaching texts of the weekly congregational worship. To hear more about my idea of Worship Connected you can go here:
I would love to connect with your pastor to encourage him to develop such a weekly guide.
"If you’ve never done family worship, start now. If you’ve done it in the past, but have fallen out of the practice, bring it back. If it is your regular practice, keep it up!"
Begin or continue your family worship journey by exploring our weekly Bible reading plans. Each plan includes:
I have made, with measurable benefit in my pastoral ministry, a weekly household worship guide for several years. I first provided it for three years in a small but busy ministry in Melbourne, Australia. The idea was developed in conjunction with the discovery of a three-year community Bible reading plan developed by Tim Chester in his pastoral ministry at The Crowded House, Sheffield, UK. The idea of this Bible reading plan is to read through the New Testament twice and the Old Testament once over three years. And the intent is that the discussion of this reading be made in the church community. After finding this resource, I decided to use this Bible reading plan, preach from a portion of the weekly reading each week, and publish daily notes on the preaching topic for the week following the preaching as a review, thus creating a household worship guide that church members were encouraged to use.
After I returned to the U.S. and took a seminary administrative position, this project became mainly theoretical for me. However, I continued to consider how and why a pastor might want to do such a practice. I took up the project as my Doctor of Ministry project, seeking to present the biblical foundations for family worship in general and the value of it connected to a pastor's preaching ministry in his own congregation. Additionally, I sought to formulate a method for busy pastors to produce such a guide in their ministry.
As I was working on this project (again, primarily theoretical at that time in my experience), I was called from this administrative seminary position to once again pastor a church. So, since December 2023, I have been creating this weekly household worship guide in the middle of real-life pastoral ministry at Springs Reformed Church (RPCNA). I completed my DMin work in January 2025, but continue to produce this guide week by week.