Preparing Your Kids for Worship

What are you instilling into your son or daughter about worship?
If more is "caught" than "taught", what does your life teach your kids about worshipping the one true and living God and our Lord Jesus Christ?

As a dad and youth pastor these are a couple of questions that have been rolling around my mind this week. So here are some quick thoughts:

1. Make worship a part of your own personal daily life. Not something you just do on Sunday at church. Do your kids know you spend time daily with God?

2. Make space in your day for worship as a family. At our home we read the Bible and pray with our kids before putting them to bed. That's not the only way to do and I'm sure it will take on different forms as our kids grow older.

3. Be excited about going to church for corporate worship with your church family. If you aren't excited about worship why should your kids be?

4. Teach the value of worship by preparing your own heart, being on time, focused on the songs and the scripture during worship. If you were going to meet the President of the US you would spend some time preparing and you certainly wouldn't be late and you would give him your full, undivided attention. Why would we treat meeting with God and his people with less respect?

5. Talk about worship on the way home from church. Tell your kids what you learned and ask them about what they learned. Engage in conversation about worship.

6. Worship is the one thing we do on earth that will continue on with us through eternity.

PS. This list isn't all inclusive and I certainly don't have all the answers. Just more thoughts from the mind of an ADD youth pastor.