Family
Who were your most formative influences in life? What experiences have made you into the person you are today? Our families’in both their healthy and dysfunctional forms’continue to shape and reshape all of us well into our old age. Sometimes we feel as if we’ll never be free from their unhealthy influence on us; sometimes […]
It's Father's Day, and Hallmark and other retail stores greatly benefit during this holiday. Revenue is increased as children, quite possibly along with a parent, flock to these venues to purchase cards and other gifts that express gratitude. Children desire to ensure their father knows how much they care about him. It's common, therefore, to […]
Almost every Christian will readily agree that the family is important. Family is the one truly natural institution, and of all the many institutions that influence us through our youth, our families’for better or worse’usually end up shaping us the most. Recent decades have witnessed rather profound changes in cultural attitudes and practices regarding family: […]
Late modernity (that is, our day and age) has proved to be surprisingly communal in its ethos. We seek our identity in the groups we affiliate with on Facebook, in the beards and hipster clothing we wear, football teams we religiously root for, professional conferences we attend, dieting strategies we swear by, organic food stores […]
I get it. I'm trying to be the spiritual leader in a home with six sinners who trust in Christ, repent of their sins, and look for something beyond this present age as our hope. God calls me and my wife to do our parts. I am all ears when brothers (yes, usually brothers) encourage […]
For over a decade I have taught an introductory course on Media Ecology at Grove City College, and I have written two little books about worship that are profoundly informed by Media Ecology. To write on this topic interests me in a number of ways, not the least of which is the interesting lexical issue: […]
If your children are in your home for 18 years, you have over 5,600 occasions (figuring a 6-day week) for family worship. If you learn a new psalm or hymn each month, they will be exposed to 216 in those 18 years. If you read a chapter a day, you will complete the Bible 4.5 […]
Catechism Training Hearts, Teaching Minds: Family Devotions Based on the Shorter Catechism by Starr Meade (P&R Publishing, 2000). Family devotions based on the Westminster Shorter Catechism.Catechism for Young Children (Christian Education and Publications; www.cepbookstore.com). Excellent start for very young children.Firm in the Faith: A Fifty-Two-Week Study Based on the Westminster Shorter Catechism by Dennis D. […]
For good or for ill, we live in a postmodern age. Among the many facets of this paradigm shift are a suspicion of order and objectivity, truth and reason, tradition and institutions; and the church has often devolved into this very institutionalism: with its rigid and distant authority structures, its attachment to traditions, its passion […]
Since my wife and I have adopted two children, we have received a number of puzzled looks and interesting comments, especially from those of other cultures. We once gave a Somali woman a ride to the store, and when she found out our little infant girl was adopted, her only question was, “How much you […]
The Family The family comprises many different vocations. A particular person may have, at the same time, the vocation of being the husband to his wife, a father to his children, and a son to his own parents as long as they are living. Each of these family vocations has a specific-and limited-number of neighbors […]
