Archive for the ‘Family Religion’ Category
Family worship basics
Posted in Family & Family Issues, Family Religion, Practice of Piety, Transgenerational Faith on September 24, 2026| Leave a Comment »
Using the “rod” with younger children
Posted in Abuse, Manipulation, Family & Family Issues, Family Religion, Fatherhood, Motherhood & Childbearing on May 5, 2026| Leave a Comment »
This video was very good and hits the nail on the head for the basics of corrective discipline or spanking our younger children. Slightly more “produced,” shall we say. But very worth your time.
And as they reference Ted Tripp’s Shepherding a Child’s Heart, I can’t commend this highly enough. See also here. I only wish I had read this and especially the chapter, “Embracing Biblical Methods: the Rod,” earlier than I did. But I sure am thankful that we did read and implement its principles, however imperfectly. I know my children are the better and much happier for it! Parents, read this book together.
Here’s a selection, to encourage you to pick it up. Responding to the objection that spanking “doesn’t work,” Tripp writes:
This objection requires further examination of a parent’s specific practice. Years of pastoral experience have persuaded me that cases of the rod not working can be summarized as follows:
A) The primary reason spanking can be ineffective is spanking in anger. Children will not willingly submit themselves to the authority of an angry, out-of-control parent. There is an innate sense of justice in a child; they will inwardly resist submitting their hearts to a parent who bullies them. They may cower. They may even respond to punishment out of fear, but they will not willingly place themselves under the authority of a parent who disciplines in unholy anger.
B) Inconsistent use of the rod. The child never knew what would elicit a spanking. Therefore, he was always testing the parent.
C) Failure to persist. Some folks never try anything long enough for it to work. They give the rod a couple of days. Their children are not transformed overnight. They give up in discouragement.
D) Failure to be effective. I have witnessed spanking administered through a double layer of diapers to a child who never stopped moving long enough to know he had been spanked. The spanking was ineffective because the parents never made the rod felt.
Ouch, and ouch again! God spanked me some years back with each of these four swats. But what a gracious, loving heavenly Father, who disciplines His own children perfectly—and uses them to raise up their seed to be “disciples” under Jesus’ easy yoke and light burden!
Worth your time
Posted in Anthropology, Family & Family Issues, Family Religion, Housing: Problems & Strategies, Israel; Calling of & Mission to the Jews, Secularization, Social Issues, The Social Status of the Church, Worth Your Time on April 12, 2026| Leave a Comment »
“The Fundamentalist Christian and Anti-Semitism,” by Francis Schaeffer (1943)
“The State of Christianity in Europe With special guest, Magnus Persson,” White Horse Inn
Third and last: family living with family—or really close. Matt Walsh says what I’ve felt for years:
The promise of play
Posted in Culture, Family & Family Issues, Family Religion, Fatherhood, Moral Suasion, Motherhood & Childbearing, Paternalism & Patriarchy, Transgenerational Faith, WPE Editor on December 14, 2025| Leave a Comment »
As Reformed people, we are deeply committed to the covenant. We have a solemn responsibility to our children—who after all are not ours, but the Lord’s. We as parents and as pastors have a sacred trust. As pastors, we require solemn vows of parents as they present their covenant children for holy baptism. As parents, we take those public vows in deep, humble gratitude for the manifold grace of God in ‘spreading His skirt over our little ones.’ With faith, we lay hold of the gracious promise, yet with a real trembling for the stewardship that is ours to raise them up in the “fear and admonition of the Lord.”
And yet, while our covenant-tradition is clothed with solemnity and gravitas, the lighter side of life shines through (or, it ought to!) as we endeavor to light the flame of faith in our children. There is a place for play; and, in fact, there is great promise in it. I’m increasingly convinced after twenty years of pastoring, twenty-five years of parenting, and now almost two years of grand-parenting, that one major ingredient of parenting and, yes, even pastoring, involves play. And I believe this is all the more vital in small, first- and second-generation Reformed and Presbyterian churches who lack the longevity of larger multi-generational churches. The margins are smaller and the risk of losing our children greater. Especially in our circles, the imperative to do all we lawfully can to create a home and church environment where our covenant children will naturally want to profess faith, commune, marry, bear children, and put down deep roots in our rootless world.
But whether your church is large or small and your subculture more fragile or more robust, these children are still ‘ours to lose.’ Yes, the Holy Spirit must regenerate. Enculturation is a barren womb without free and sovereign grace. But our responsibility, in giving and taking baptismal vows, is not just to catechize and keep good order in home and church. We may and must, if I may put it this way, “win” our children winsomely. And so I say, let us play.
(more…)Alexander, “Counsels to Christian Mothers”
Posted in Experimental Religion & the Cure of Souls, Family & Family Issues, Family Religion, Motherhood & Childbearing, Old Princeton, Pastoral Theology on December 2, 2025| Leave a Comment »
The following is included as one of several appendices to Princeton Seminary’s first president and American Presbyterian worthy, Archibald Alexander. Entitled “Counsels to Christian Mothers,” this piece is worth the cost of the book, and the book itself truly worth its weight in gold. This is definitely one of my all-time favorites, a rich exploration of Christian experience in all its varieties, complexities, trials and triumphs, and all from a confessionally Reformed viewpoint and drawn from the heart of a seasoned physician of souls. The Banner of Truth has been continuously publishing it for I don’t know how long, and for good reason. Also, if you’d like to hear a recording of it, I did that several years back (I have improved in quality since then, so fair warning!). For more audio resources, visit WPE Audio here.
* * * * * *
When I address myself to Christian mothers, I do not mean to intimate non-Christian mothers stand in no need of admonition. Alas! that in a Christian country there should be mothers who have nothing of the spirit of Christ! Young people often promise themselves that they will attend to true religion after they are married and settled in the world. How preposterous is this! It ought rather to be their resolution not to think of entering into a state involving such weighty responsibilities, and the exercise of so many virtues—until they have become the possessors of true religion! Without vital piety how is it possible for any woman rightly to fulfill the duties of a wife, and especially of a mother? I feel that no woman destitute of religion is fit to become a wife and mother. Only think of it—an impious mother! If it were not so common, the very expression would excite emotions similar to those which we experience when we hear of an impious minister.
I address Christian mothers, because from them alone can I expect a patient hearing. I address Christian mothers, because all mothers ought to be sincere Christians. Is there a person on earth, whose mind is so perverted by prejudice, as not to perceive a congruity between piety and this tender relation? It was formerly a current opinion, even among infidels that religion was an ornament and safeguard to a woman. I knew one distinguished man who had renounced all belief in the Christian religion himself, who encouraged it in his wife, and furnished her with all the necessary means of attending church; and when one of his friends complained to him, that his wife was becoming pious, which gave him great concern, he told him that he was a fool, for that nothing was more suitable and desirable than that a wife should be pious. Even infidels are constrained, like the demons of old, to give their testimony in favor of Christ. Many ungodly men desire to obtain wives of genuine piety, and few intelligent men in our country would be pleased with a female infidel. Such a character was so rare in Virginia forty years ago, when infidelity abounded among the higher classes of men, that when a certain lady was pointed out as the advocate of deistical opinions, it created a revulsion of feeling in almost every mind.
Here I take pleasure in saying that in no class of society anywhere have I found examples of more pure and elevated piety than among the ladies of Virginia. And I have reason to believe that these examples have rather been increased than diminished since I left my native State. It may, in an important sense, be said that the Commonwealth has been preserved from utter destruction by the prudence, purity and piety of Virginian mothers. They have been the salt which has arrested the progress of moral corruption in the mass of society. Accordingly there is no country in the world, perhaps, where mothers are so much respected by their children, and have so great an influence over them. Ask almost any young Virginian where he will look for the brightest examples of moral excellence, and his thoughts will turn at once to the character of pious females, and perhaps to his own mother, if she happens to be pious.
(more…)Beeke, “Keys to a Strong Christian Marriage”
Posted in Christian Ethics, Family & Family Issues, Family Religion, Gender & Sexuality, Motherhood & Childbearing on September 29, 2025| Leave a Comment »
Shepherd your child’s heart
Posted in Family & Family Issues, Family Religion, Fatherhood, Motherhood & Childbearing on December 30, 2024| Leave a Comment »
Here is an online classroom version of Tedd Tripp’s great Shepherding a Child’s Heart. This is the go-to parenting book for many in conservative, Reformed circles. I would strongly encourage every parent to read it . . . or at least watch and discuss these videos.
Stay put, seize opportunity, live together
Posted in Family Religion, Locality & the Law of Residence, The Romance of Locality, Transgenerational Faith on October 1, 2024| Leave a Comment »
The following three articles by Frank DeVito at the Witherspoon Institute resonate with me rather deeply. He challenges conventional thinking in order to promote the rejuvenation not just of the nuclear family, but the extended family, and that inter-generationally in the localities where God has planted us. Well said, sir!
Un Método Sencillo de Catequizar, por Thomas Doolittle
Posted in Antigua Kirk, Care for the Youth, Catechesis, Church Order & Discipline, Diets of Catechizing, Español, Evangelistic Catechesis, Family Religion, Ordinary Means Ministry, Pastoral Theology, The Sacred Ministry on June 29, 2023| Leave a Comment »
Este tratado de Thomas Doolittle, escrito por el pastor de la infancia del gran comentarista de la Biblia Matthew Henry, es una obra maestra muy olvidada sobre el tema de la naturaleza, la justificación y los métodos de la catequesis. Es una lectura obligada para cualquier pastor reformado.
Reformed parish missions: “To the Greek and to the barbarian”
Posted in Articles, Contemporary Parochialism, Covenant Theology, Family Religion, Gospel Proclamation, Gospel Tactics, Locality & the Law of Residence, Ministerial Fidelity, Missiology, Ordinary Means Ministry, Parish in American Context, Parochial Strategy, Reformed Parish Mission (RPM) Posts, Social Byproduct, The Church in America, The Gospel & the Poor, The Visible Church, Theology of Community, Thomas Chalmers, Transgenerational Faith, WPE Editor on May 23, 2022| Leave a Comment »
Years back, my heart got large for missions — especially urban missions to those on the ‘other side of the tracks.’ At about the same time, I became Reformed (a high octane, old school Presbyterian no less!), putting me in a a sub-subset of a subset. My life and ministry has ever since lived somewhat in the frontiers the unlikely and the implausible. A straightlaced, tall gringo Presbyterian goes out among immigrants, trying to evangelize in broken Spanish and recruit sinners to the “outward and ordinary means” in a humble, little Reformed church 15 minutes to the south. And to sing Psalms. Without musical accompaniment. In English.
I admit that there are all kinds of problems with this model, from a human perspective. But it is actually more plausible than one might think. Yet before I deal with the plausibles, let me first set forth some principles.
The first principle is principle! Principle precedes the practical. We must first determine whether something should be done before we decide whether or not we think it is practical. We ought to go out and bring the Gospel to all. None excluded. Politics quite aside, we may and must not discriminate based on sex, ethnicity, gender, or for that matter even sexual ‘preference.’ By the mandate of our King, we must go and tell them. Yes, as Calvinists, we know that not every “all” means “all.” But “every creature” does in fact mean “every creature.” Even if they don’t look like us, eat like us, or even use our language. It doesn’t matter whether they ‘have papers’ or not, vote Democrat or not. How they got here and whether they should by law be here, is a separate issue for a different discussion (and full disclosure: I lean quite “red” when it comes to immigration policy!). But that they are here means they are here for us to evangelize. And not just gripe about and avoid them as much as possible.
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