Both my husband and I have written about instituting a family worship time in our home, and throughout this site are scattered recommendations for books that have helped us with this. I thought it might be helpful to compile them all in one spot. Below you will find a list of books and other resources that you might find helpful if you’re interested in beginning family worship time with your own children. (You can click on any image to find the Amazon listing for each book.)
One note/disclaimer- we have not read or used all of the resources in this list since nailing down our family’s specific rhythm. However, I wanted to point towards a variety of books from trusted publishers and authors, in case you’re just getting started and want to do something a bit different than how we’ve done it.
Books on Family Rhythms
If you’re not quite convinced of the benefit to family worship, you’re not sure where to start, or you simply need some encouragement to keep going, I recommend any of these books with one disclaimer. I have not yet finished Building Spiritual Habits in the Home so I can’t recommend it based on content, yet. However, it is written by the creators of Advent Blocks, which we use every Christmas, so I feel comfortable pointing it to you as a potential good option.
Bible Storybooks
If you have young children, a Bible storybook is a good place to start with family devotions. We simply call it “the story” when letting our kids know it’s time to transition to family worship time. We have used two storybooks with our children, and I compared both of them in other articles– The Jesus Storybook Bible and The Biggest Story Bible Storybook.
If you have very young children (think 0-2 years) you might consider checking out God’s Big Promises Bible Storybook. I did not find this one until recently, but most of the stories in this one are quite a bit shorter than in the other two storybooks and the language is simpler. Like the other two, there are a wide variety of stories included in this book but it may be better for little ones with shorter attention spans.
Memorization
We have not done much catechesis with our children, but there are two options listed above if you’re interested in starting that kind of practice with your kids. Our children do memorize Bible verses through the Truth Trackers program at our church, but I recently came across the Easy for Me Bible Verses book that looks like a great option for families who desire to help their kids begin memorizing Scripture but may not have a dedicated program at their church.
Bibles
Once our children get a little older, we will transition to reading the actual Bible with them. We own all three of the Bibles shown above. Our five-year-old uses the Easy for Me Bible in church and, with my help finding the passage, she follows along with Scripture reading during the service. I like that this one is simpler, while still containing “extras” that she finds interesting. She really enjoys looking at the Explorer Bible at home–it’s well-designed for children with bright colors and lots of additional information to help them understand what’s going on in the passages.
When she “graduated” out of the preschool ministry, our church’s children’s ministry gave her the CSB Explorer Bible. This Bible is chock-full of great information like background, dates, highlighted memory verses, and more. There are inserts with QR codes that parents can scan, linking to videos about certain passages and discussion questions families can use during devotional time at home. We don’t use this with our kids regularly right now, but I think it will be a great tool to use as they get older.
The Read to Me Bible is probably the simplest of the three. The “extras” are fewer, and geared more towards younger, preschool-aged children.
Devotionals
We have not used a devotional in our particular rhythm, but if you’re interested in beginning family worship time with a devotional, I recommend looking at any of these. We own a copy of Unfolding Grace but it’s written with children ages 8 and up in mind, so we’re not quite there yet. The other two devotionals are better suited for younger children.
Other
I mentioned this above, but we have been using Advent Blocks from GoodKind for years. In fact, Advent Blocks is how we began our family worship time in the first place. They created several other products, which we have not purchased, but it’s worth a look if you’re interested in a more specified approach. (Also, I feel like this reads like an influencer-esque paid promotion, but it is not! We just really enjoy Advent Blocks.)
Photo by Susan Holt Simpson on Unsplash
