Family Altar
Most parents I know want to do this but don’t know how. They don’t know where to start, what to say or how to even begin. Yet it is the most important thing you can do as a parent. And here is what it is…
You need to build a family altar.
What is a family altar?
A family altar is not physical but spiritual. It is a time you set aside to read the Bible together and pray. So I’m not talking about building an altar to put in your house made of wood or stone. I’m talking about building a habit of having time with God as a family.
Twenty years ago, as a youth pastor, I wrote a system to take our youth ministry through the Bible in 4 years. Every 6 weeks, we began a new study, started fresh and read through the Bible on our own throughout the week, and then talked and taught from it when we got together for our big and small group meetings. What I wrote then is now known as Soul Exercises. It is being used across the nation by ministries to engage students and families in daily Bible readings.
Over the years, I used this material with my own daughters and even at very young ages (long before they were adolescents), and it became the basis for us reading the Bible together. Here’s how it worked:
- We read the daily Bible passage(s) out loud together
- We read the discussion questions about what we read and talked about it
- We prayed together.
It was as simple as that.
Maybe Soul Exercises can work for you like it did for us. Go to the website and download a free sample. Consider this source or another, but the most important thing is reading the Bible together.
Geoff Eckart, CEO
Never The Same
© 2021, Never The Same
Photo by Rajesh Rajput on Unsplash