Promoting Family Religion

The following is an edited excerpt from an article A Call to Family Worship written by Dr. Ligon Duncan and Dr. Terry Johnson and published in Give Praise to God: A Vision for Reforming Worship, ed. Philip Graham Ryken, Derek W. H. Thomas, and J. Ligon Duncan (Phillipsburg, NJ: P & R, 2003) 317-338. Dr. Duncan is Senior Minister, First Presbyterian Church Jackson, Mississippi and Dr. Jonhson is Senior Pastor, Independent Presbyterian Church Savannah, Georgia. I was privileged to take some courses with Dr. Duncan at the Reformed Theological Seminary where he is an Adjunct Professor of Theology.

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When all is said and done though, some of the profoundest things we can repeatedly do to promote a heart for God in our children are also the simplest things.

First, sit together at church. Go to church every week (even on vacation), fifty-two weeks a year, year after year, and sit together. That is it. I guarantee it will have a profoundly beneficial spiritual impact. The family ought to be in corporate worship faithfully and in it together. Children can get with their friends after the services, but in church, the family ought to be prime. Do not underestimate the power of the ordinary means of grace in the life of the family.

Second, work to have a Lord’s Day. Live as if Sunday is the Lords, not yours. View it as the “market day of the soul.” Don’t let the day become cluttered up. Avoid unnecessary labor and travel. Anticipate it with enthusiasm rather than bemoaning it. Make going to church the high point of the week. Let yourchildren know you love it. Do special things with them on that day that you do no other (e.g., Dad: cook them breakfast, wake them in a special way, spend relational time with them in the afternoon, read them spiritual books and stories, make ice cream sundaes for them after the evening service and the like).

Third, attend evening worship. If we believe the whole day is the Lords day, then it ought to be framed with worship. Morning and evening worship in the Reformed tradition is the single most powerful and effective total congregational discipleship program in the history of Christianity. I have never known a family that was faithful in Sunday evening attendance in an evangelical church, that, when the great crises of life came, did not weather the storm and walk in faith, and persevere.

Fourth, memorize the catechisms. It is a proven method. It is simple. It is content rich. It teaches our children the language of Zion, as well as the precious doctrines of the Bible. It increases memory ability and capacity for thinking.

Fifth, worship together as a family at home. Praise, pray, and read the Bible together as a family at home. Why should we do family worship? (1) Because we are stewards to God of our children, whom he has graciously given to us. Ps 127:3 tells us how we are to view them “Behold, children are a gift of the LORD.” How will we account to him of the soul-care that we are to give these precious trusts? (2) Because God has commanded us to train our children up in the Lord in the home. As we have already seen in Deut 6:7, God says, “You shall teach them diligently to your sons and shall talk of them when you sit in your house and when you walk by the way and when you lie down and when you rise up.” (3) Because the home is the seedbed of piety and religion for the church (1 Tim 3:4–5, 12).

Politics, Power and the Pocket

I recently read an article entitled “Political Leaders in Africa: Presidents, Patrons or Profiteers?” It was written by Jo-Ansie van Wyk, a lecturer in International Politics at the University of South Africa (Unisa), Pretoria. This excellent article is hosted on the website of the African Centre for the Constructive Resolution of Disputes (ACCORD) www.accord.org.za/downloads/op/op_2007_1.pdf. Our own Mr. Lee Habasonda is the executive director of the southern African chapter of ACCORD.

For those interested in African politics and leadership, this article is a must-read. This is the article that has prompted the line of thought you are about to read in my recent blog post. Reflecting on the current political leadership being exhibited by our present government, one does not need to eternally scratch his head, looking for an answer to Jo-Ansie van Wyk’s question in the title of his article. The last six months of Zambian’s political landscape have burgeoned into a colossus of unbridled corruption and irresponsible public expenditure.

Reading in the media about the sittings of the Parliamentary Public Accounts Committee (PAC), chaired by the competent Hon. Charles Milupi, you feel like wanting to jump out of your skin over the numerous incidences of abuse of public funds that are addressed by this committee. Year after year, the office of the Auditor General highlights serious financial irregularities in the management of public funds. Take the example of the K6.9 billion revenue from the Ministry of Home Affairs collected in 2007, and was only banked in February 2009! Where was the money all this time? Who had custody over it? What did they use it for? No doubt someone must have used it as capital for his business, or put it in a personal account, earning interest over money that should have been used on needy areas of our national economy.

But the one saga that has flared people’s tempers is the K10 billion stolen from the Ministry of Health. And the figure, we are told by the Auditor General is actually close to K30 billion, or even more. For a country that is on life support economically, to lose such a colossal amount into individuals’ pockets is nothing short of economic banditry of the highest order.

But how has corruption become so deeply entrenched into the fabric of our society? Are we not able to rid ourselves of its putrefying stain? Of course as Christians we know that from a depraved mind emanates all kinds of sins, and corruption is just one such manifestation of human depravity. If people’s only motive to enter the public service is to feed their penchant for luxurious lifestyles, they will rape our resources to the last Kwacha given the opportunity. And if you do not have a responsible government made up of men and women with principles crafted on the anvil of selfless service in the interest of the people, the corrupt will roost and reproduce themselves in such an enabling environment.

If people’s only motive to enter the public service is to feed their penchant for luxurious lifestyles, they will rape our resources to the last Kwacha given the opportunity.

That is what happens when men and women with a serious poverty of moral and ethical restraint fuse themselves with politicians destitute of political will to fight corruption; you get the illegitimate children of systemic and chronic plunder and political and judicial indifference. What we have in Zambia is a political power debacle that can be traced to the marriage between depraved charlatans and political profiteers, resulting into a gargantuan charade of elitism which is not serving the country at all, but has brought about an internal economic haemorrhage that is gradually taking our country’s life away. And maybe that’s why our government has bought the hundred hearses from China, not only to escort the poor Zambians to their graves in “dignity,” but symbolically to announce the death of our beloved country. The Nyanja words (not very legible though) on the back of this minibus sum up the dire situation we are in: “BANE VITHU VAVUTA.” (friends, life is hard).


What must we do to get ourselves out of this mess? We need a mass revolutionary change of mindset. The kind of change that will serve as a catalyst to bring about decency on the political and economic front. I believe that Zambia is not a lost cause. We have the available human resources that can resurrect this country from the endemic scourge of corrupt governance. Let us allow intellectual rationality, reason and honesty to provoke every informed Zambian towards the ascendancy to the mountaintop of hope, progress, and long anticipated new chapter in our history.

As we approach 2011, the year of elections, let us face this issue with austere truth. Which political party must we bring to power? Is it capable to deliver on the promises and inspire hope? Is built on a strong foundation of transparency and zero tolerance to corruption? Is it humane, reasonable and accommodating to divergent views? Let us do away with leaders suffering from chronic ideological emptiness. Myopic, uncultured, visionless and directionless politicians must not be given any place in our political dispensation. All they care for is power and their pockets. Let them slither into the archive of failure. God save Zambia.