Introduction
Families often struggle to know how to build togetherness and a sense of common purpose. While Andie and I are far from perfect parents, we do think about these issues frequently, intentionally, and (we hope) carefully.
If you are looking for a place to start, here are basic things you should be doing with your family to grow your togetherness. These are intended to invest in the long-term emotional and spiritual health of your children.
1. Go to Church Together
Why start here? Because if you lay a foundation apart from the Lord, your plans are sure to fail. As Solomon writes in Psalm 127:1a,
Unless the Lord builds the house,those who build it labor in vain.
That reality might lead someone else to put something like family devotions or Bible reading in the top space. So why start with church attendance?
For a number of reasons. To begin with, it creates a weekly rhythm in which your entire family is doing something together. This is something increasingly lost in our society. Simply having an activity which we in participate together on a regular basis is not part of many family’s lives. All three points will be related to these regular rhythms of together time, but we start with church because it comes at the same time every week—but it is only once a week, and thus it is easy to establish once you decide to prioritize it.
It’s also important to start here because of the three, it is the most important in absolute terms. Worship puts the other vital parts of earthly life in an eternal perspective. We cannot enjoy work, rest, recreation, and table fellowship for the gifts they are if we do not orient ourselves first toward God. So orient your family to God, and commit to gathering with His people in worship every week.
Further, your children need to know that listening to God through his word is not a peculiarity of your family. It is something we do, but it is not something only we do. We are gathering with the people of God in the local church. I want my children to come to know Jesus personally, but they must understand that knowing him can never be a private matter. Our family is part of a bigger Family.
If we want our children to continue walking with the Lord after they leave our homes, it will in large measure depend upon the cross-generational relationships they have built with other believers. Do they know older Christians who give them an example of what walking with Jesus through a career and child-rearing looks like? Have they engaged with seasoned saints who have walked with Christ for 40 or 50 or more years? Do they know younger children for whom they feel responsible and want to encourage? These types of relationships are vital. And while they are not automatically created by mere church attendance, they will not be created apart from regularly gathering with the same body of believers over the course of weeks and months and years.
So go to church together.
2. Eat Together
Some might specify here, as I’ve often heard, eat dinner (or supper, depending on your generation and geography…the evening meal) together. I don’t think that specificity is nearly as important as simply eating some meal together on a regular basis. Being together around the table allows you to talk, in a setting that is inherently more relaxed and natural than other parts of life.
This, like church attendance, has become a victim of the modern obsession with/idolatry of busyness. We see this even in our family. While in a “normal” week we may eat dinner together five or six times, there are too many weeks which veer off of this standard. Baseball, theatre, community events, all conspire to crowd out family time. Depending on your church context, extra church events can have a similarly negative role.
You must fight this temptation to live running at full tilt. Your kids need time with you more than they need one more activity. That’s not conjecture, that’s a fact. It’s a fact that dads, especially, need to take note of. Your emotionally engaged presence matters more than literally any activity your son or daughter could be involved in.
The table was a keystone of Jesus’ earthly mission, and I think one of the things we see there is the deeply human truth that breaking bread together is part of how table fellowship signifies belonging and acceptance. What the Pharisees protested when asking “why does he eat with tax collectors and sinners?” was the indication that eating together gave: he loved and accepted these people.
Now, hopefully, your children are not tax collectors or notorious sinners. But the principle still applies: one of the ways we teach our kids that they belong, that we are part of the same family, that we love and accept one another is to regularly share table fellowship.
So, pick a meal—breakfast, lunch, or dinner—and eat together.
3. Spend Quantity Time Together
The first two points are really specific applications of this broader point.
There is an old trope about quality over quantity when it comes to time with your kids. That’s a pile of hot garbage conjured up by people who feel guilty about how little time they spend with their kids.
Here’s the deal with quality memories: you don’t get to pick when and how they happen. They happen at the edges, in the little moments. They aren’t the sort of thing you shove into a day-planner. Quantity time creates quality time.
I wrote the preceding two paragraphs last week. Now, picking this back up after Father’s Day, I’m even more convinced of their accuracy. My wife printed off a sheet of “fun facts about dad” and had each my kids fill them out. Besides making me turn into a teary and sentimental mess, they provided some real insight into how my kids receive love.
One of the sections was about things they liked to do with dad. None of them were special events, planned activities, or anything else that would typically land in the “quality time” category. It was tickle fights on the floor (spontaneous), playing catch (again, spontaneous), and talking (spontaneous and constant). In other words, it was normal and mundane activities—things that have piled up over time—that stood out in their minds. They like to hang out, they like to talk, they like to hear me say that they’re my kids and I love them.
Guys, this isn’t rocket science.
It does, however, take intentionality. You have to decide to spend time with your family, as opposed to the 8,000 other (often important) things you could be doing. It has to be more important than your personal comfort and ease. I’m not saying ditch your hobbies or your friends (I’m actually more convinced than ever that you need to have things you enjoy to do as part of your life, and more convicted than ever that I need to invest in friendship). But I am saying that your family is more important. They’re more important than any other people in your life, because you have a duty before God to love your wife and live with her in an understanding way, and to raise your children in the fear and admonition of the Lord. You can’t do that absently, and you can’t do it by proxy. You just have to be there. Your intentional presence should bring its own form of stability, structure, and peace to the home. They’re more important than your job, not because work doesn’t matter, but because raising a godly family is the most lasting work you’ll ever do.
Spend time together playing. Spend time together reading. If you have a way to, spend time together working. That last one is especially important for boys.
Conclusion
Nothing here is radical or revolutionary. But it does take intentionality. You have to decide that investing in your family is important to you. And a lot of that will come as you realize how important it is for them, and your profound responsibility before God to do what is best for them. These three things—going to church, eating meals, and spending quantity time together—aren’t exhaustive. But if, one by one, you can start to invest in your family this way, I think the results you see will be more than satisfying. And the process itself will be full of joy.
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Read it.
This is an incredibly important piece from Anthony Bradley.
One of the (many) excellent lines:
“One can have right doctrine and still be an approval-seeking narcissist who abuses women and terrorizes children, or a people-pleasing doormat.”
Watch it (well, if so inclined. Reading the above should probably be a higher priority).
An old sermon:
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