What can you and your children do to prepare for Sunday?

Before Sunday

Before Sunday, it is important to promote Sunday as the day you look forward to as a family. It needs to be an exciting day in your family and the best day of the week. It is the day that we meet with our closest spiritual friends, where we are closest to heaven, where we most enjoy the presence and blessing of God. It is the day we celebrate Christ’s Resurrection weekly and  remember that he has accomplished salvation for us. We need to speak to our children about the Lord’s Day worship service as something exciting and grown-up. This means, as parents, we need to have this perspective ourselves. 

John Piper says, “The greatest stumbling block for children in worship is that their parents do not 

cherish the hour. Children can feel the difference between duty and delight. Therefore, the first 

and most important job of a parent is to fall in love with the worship of God. You can’t impart 

what you don’t possess.” 

Cultivating relationships in the church is an important part of cultivating this attitude. It will make a tremendous difference to help your children cultivate a relationship with your pastors, their Sunday School teachers, and other adults of the church. It will make the times of preaching and instruction personal and real to them. 

Plan specifically for exercising hospitality on Sundays. It will cause your children to look forward to the day. It will make an impression on them to see the Lord’s Day as a day of fellowship and celebration, to see adults engaging in spiritual conversation after the service, to participate in it themselves. 

Then prepare for Sunday on Saturdays. As you pray at meals, pray for God’s blessing on the services of the church the next day. With younger children, find out the order of songs for the next day and sing them with your children to familiarize them with the music. If your pastor is preaching a series, read ahead in the passage to prepare for what he might say. 

Plan your schedule Saturday night as much as possible so your family can be rested for Sunday. Sometimes it helps to prepare clothes and food the night before to make Sunday mornings less stressful on the family.

Taken from (blog.faithchurchpa.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/Parenting-In-the-Pew-booklet.pdf)