Why We Worship With Our Kids

This was originally published last spring.  As I am co-teaching a class on worship this month, I have been reconsidering how we train up a generation who will love worship.  
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Several years ago I had a conversation about worship with our friend and pastor, Zac.  It challenged the way I look at Sunday worship as a family. 

Zac said, “Worship is the only thing our children will do forever.” 

Forever. 

Worship will be the one and only thing I teach my children that they’ll do forever. 

They will not need to pee in the potty, or do long division, or tie their shoes forever. 

They will do only this one thing. 

Worship.

With all the effort I put into the things that time will wash away, I started to hope I’d get this  one thing right.

Not out of fear that I will have the only kids that show up to heaven who stand when they should sit or raise a hand when they should bow their head.  For that has very little to do with worship doesn’t it.?

No, they will get it right.  Scripture promises us that. 

I need to prepare them for the worship they do before forever starts.

There are those who are better equipped to talk about the why’s and how’s of worship (Zac’s blog would be a good place to start).  But I know this... through worship my girls will encounter the object of that worship.  The One who was and is and will be worthy of their worship, forever.

We’ve changed what Sunday morning looks like.  Pete and I have stopped thinking of Sunday morning as our time off.  Our time to drop the kids off in an age appropriate program and take on the big adult business of worship without them.  Those 10 words Zac shared with me turned Sunday morning into the most important parenting hour of the week.  Not because worship only happens in the confines of Sunday morning service, but because it should actually happen there. 

We have been through an extended time of church shopping.  God has yet to show us where our church home will be here in Raleigh.  A fact that weekly tears at my heart and leaves me feeling homeless.  But God has used this time to sharpen Pete and I, for there isn’t a comfortable children’s program to lean on, there is just the four of us.

Recently we walked in to a church full of strangers.  Emily and Sarah were approached by a helpful volunteer to go a watch a Veggie Tale movie during the service.  Without hesitation, they both declined.  I watched Emmie clutch her “church purse” a little closer when she said it, as if she was guarding it’s precious cargo. 

She was, in fact, guarding something precious.

We took our seats and Emmie unpacked her things. She took out her church journal. She found her pencil. With Pete’s help she looked in the order of worship and found the passages that would be read and marked them with an offering envelope. She settled back in her seat just before the first song began. With classic Emmie exasperation she looked at me and said, “why would I go watch a Veggie Tale movie?”

She was here to Worship. 


If you are looking for a place to start on this journey.  I highly recommed this book.  It was where we started.

Maybe Modesty Isn't All It's Cracked Up To Be

Well, I am just going to come out and say something that a woman working in a Southern Baptist Church probably shouldn't say...

"I'm not sure modesty is all it's cracked up to be."

There, I said it.  You see, I am concerned with the overwhelming amount of attention spent in the church training girls between the age of 8 and 18 about how to dress.   We have classes,  bible studies, and fashion shows to teach girls how to dress in the right way.  How to look cute and modest, fashionable and conservative all at the same time.  While it is with the good intentions of teaching girls not to look like harlots, or believe they can only be beautiful if they dress like a porn star, the subtle underlying message I fear we are teaching these girls is that it actually matters what you wear.

The church is helping drive an obsession with valuing the external. 

Where are the classes on figuring out your gifting?  Where are the classes teaching these girls about their sisters around the world who are slaves... factory slaves, sex slaves... actual slaves?  Where are the classes teaching these girls Acts 1:8, and James 1:22, and Proverbs 31: 20?  Where are the classes that teach these girls that the Church is God's plan and they make up half of it!

Sadly, they just don't exist...

Where and when in the church are we raising up an army?  You see, we need one.  The world desperately needs an army of women who are willing to do more than attend a bible study, and as my friend puts it, "skid in to Heaven."  We desperately need a generation greater than mine.  A generation that gets off the couch and says, "Wait, all this wealth, all this education, all this abundance in my life... it's actually not just for me to sit back and enjoy!"

That's why I think maybe we need to take another look at modesty.  Every psychologist and mother alike will tell you a girl dresses like a hoochie to get attention.  Why?  Because she wants to be valued. Valued by the men around her.  Valued by a boy who will stare at her, take her out, pick her as his own.  She dresses like a whore because she's been taught her value is to be decorative.

That's where the church needs to come in...

We need to teach our girls that there was a man whose name was Jesus.  He saw them before they even were, and He picked them.  He picked each one of us girls as his own.  He loved and cherished us so much He gave his very life for us.  We can not be more valued by any man on earth than we already are by Jesus.  And after dying for us, He valued us SO MUCH that He gave us a purpose for our time here on earth.... and it wasn't to be decorative.  

He charged us with bringing His message to the ends of the earth... (Act 1:8)

He charged us with loving one another as ourselves ... (Mark 12:31)

Through Him we are created to teach, serve, contribute, and lead.  (Romans 12:5-8)  

I  have never met a young woman who knew her value in God, and felt a calling on her life, who dressed immodestly.  I guarantee you Katie Davis's mom does not have to keep on her about not wearing sheer shirts and mini skirts.  That girl knows her value.  We need 100,000 Katie Davises to rise up.  Our world is fallen and the needs are great.  We are losing the church in America.  We can not raise up another generation of modest girls whose church training focused on cute accessories and skirt lengths-.  What we need is radical girls.  We desperately need a generation of outlandish, spectacular, remarkable women who know their true worth and the impact they can make on this world.  Once we raise that generation up, modesty will be a non-issue in the church, and the church might just not be lost after all.  

We Sit Amazed By You

Five days ago I shared with you Sarah's vision for Hoops of Hope.  I shared how we are amazed by this girl of ours.  Today I wanted to tell, our sweet friends, that we are amazed BY YOU!  Thank you to all of you who hopped over to www.hoopsofhoperaleigh.com and donated.  Thank you to all of you who reposted on Facebook.  Thank you to all of you have emailed us the most amazing emails of encouragement for Sarah.

When I posted on Thursday, Sarah and her team had raised around $2,400.00. That evening Sarah was wrestling with the idea of proposing to her team that they personally try to raise $4,000 for the event.  It seemed too much to hope for.  By the time of their meeting the next day, they were at $3,700.00, so the girls changed their goal to $5,000.00.  We may reach that today.  Praise God!

When I gave Sarah the latest totals, she started laughing and said, "I don't even know what our next goal should be!"  

No eye has seen, no ear has heard, and no mind has imagined what God has prepared for those who love him. 1 Cor 2:9

What should our next goal be?  What a good question for all of us.  It's so easy to plan small and dream in miniature.  But you my brothers and sisters have reminded me that our God is the God who owns the cattle on a thousands hills. He is not the God of small dreams, so we should not be a people of them. 

Thank you to each of you who have said yes to partnering with Sarah and her friends and joining them in working for the people of Hamuandu as they await their miracle of a medical clinic.  May it be built for them faster than they could ever have dreamed.  

If you live in the Raleigh area we still have a lot of space for participants.  Come by yourself, or get together a team and register at www.hoopsofhoperaleigh.com!  We'd love to see you on Feb 21st!