New ESV Seek & Find Bible

Crossway has recently published the new ESV Seek & Find Bible for 5-9 year-olds (but which will also serve as a great Bible for family worship). Read this post by Justin Taylor for more information about it.

Connecting Church and Home

The videos from the recent "Connecting Church and Home Conference" at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary are now available. Click here to see them.

Our Home Is Like a Little Church

Sojourn Community Church in Louisville recently published an excellent resource to encourage family worship - Our Home Is Like a Little Church.

This brief book was written to teach preschool children the Christian doctrine of the home as a place of worship where the father teaches his family God's commands and leads them to worship the one true God. The home is the front line of ministry to children—not the Sunday school or public church gathering. All the practices present in a Christian worship service—the Scriptures, prayer, and praise -should be present in the home as well.

Below is a brief video of Bobby Gilles, one of the authors, discussing the book.

Horton on the Importance of Passing on the Faith

The following excerpt from Michael Horton's The Gospel-Driven Life ought to be pondered by every parent, pastor, children's pastor, youth pastor, and church:

Christian homes and churches are the only institutions in which our children will learn to find themselves in God's story. When they are united more by the trends of pop culture than by the faith and practice of the whole church in all times and places, our youth become victims of our sloth. We should not be surprised that over half of those reared in evangelical homes and churches today do not join or even attend a church regularly when they go off to college. If we are going to see our children grow up into Christ instead of abandoning the church, our spiritual life at home and in the church must incorporate them into the teaching and fellowship of the apostolic faith. They can find "ministry opportunities" through United Way, the Peace Corps, or Habitat for Humanity. They can find friends at the fraternity or sorority. They can find intellectual stimulation in class. And they can find a sense of meaning and purpose in their vocations. If their home churches exchanged the ministry of preaching and teaching the apostles' doctrine for a variety of ministries and activities that they could find legitimate versions of in the world, then it is difficult to come up with a reasonable answer when they ask, "Why do I need the church?"

--Michael Horton, The Gospel-Driven Life: Being Good News People in a Bad News World