“As you know how we exhorted, and comforted, and charged everyone one of you, as a father does his own children, that you would walk worthy of God who calls you into His own kingdom and glory.” – 1 Thessalonians 2:11-12 NKJV
Family ministry perspectives in the Puritan era. Having received a rich spiritual legacy from the reformers, the Puritans of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in England and America fanned the unquenchable flame by cultivating this Reformation vision and brought it to full bloom as demonstrated by the spiritual disciplines of consistent family worship and intentional discipleship of the next generation (Stinson, 2011, p. 115). Standing on the shoulders of proverbial giants, the Puritans capitalized on all that their predecessors had bequeathed to succeeding generations including common-language translations of the Scripture and mass-printed books (Stinson, 2011, p. 119). There was a distinct revival of biblical family life among these successors of the reformers as clearly documented by the prolific amount of material they wrote and distributed on this subject matter (Pollard, 2014, p. 37). Upon doing so, the term “Puritan” was first coined 1580 as a derogatory slur to describe those who were endeavoring to purify the Anglican liturgy from the tyranny of religious corruption and anti-biblical tradition (Stinson, 2011, p. 119). In contrast to sweeping generalizations and modern perceptions, the Puritans were faithful Christians of insatiable joy, romantic love, and great passion especially regarding life at home with their families (Stinson, 2011, p. 120).
As far as the Puritans were concerned, every home was to be a household of faith and every father a priest in his own family who as the divinely ordained spiritual leader was responsible for leading in worship (Stinson, 2011, p. 120). Time and eternity were indeed at stake, for Puritans like Richard Baxter (1615-1651) because abdication of this manly responsibility was to surrender one’s family to the whims of the world, the flesh, and the devil (Baxter as cited in Stinson, 2011, p. 120). This faithful pastor of Kidderminster once pointed out that a holy and well-governed family is central to propagating the fear of God from generation to generation thus also serving as a preparative to a holy and well-governed church (Baxter as cited in Stinson, 2011, p. 123).
These convictions were also built into the Westminster Confession of Faith and the Second London Confession of 1689 as essential an outworking of the Presbyterian and Baptist doctrinal statement (Whitney, 2016, p .31). In 1647, the Scottish Presbyterians also published a companion document to accompany their confession of faith called The Directory for Family Worship which included guidelines to fathers and a warning against neglecting this duty (Whitney, 2016, pp. 31-32). Rienow (2013) explains why this was a top priority and that neglecting family worship was an issue of church discipline because the Puritans were passionate about the advancing the gospel locally and globally beginning with the discipleship of the souls of their own sons and daughters at home (p. 199). According to the Puritans, any church that did not make family worship a serious priority was not really serious about advancing the gospel to the ends of the earth (Rienow, 2013, p. 199).
The classic work, The Worship of the English Puritans, by Horton Davies describes the high esteem in which family worship was upheld by these successors of the Reformation (Davies as cited in Whitney, 2016, p. 33). J. I. Packer explains that the Puritans believed it was the husband’s responsibility to channel the family into religion through regularly scheduled times of biblical instruction which must flow out of his own prior acquisition of the truth (Packer as cited in Whitney, 2016, p. 33). Beloved commentator, Matthew Henry (1662-1714) experienced this firsthand in his father’s household which was once described as none other than the house of God and the gate of heaven (Henry as cited in Whitney, 2016, p. 34). “Turn your families into little churches”, wrote Henry, and therefore pass on a “good legacy” and “a good inheritance to be left to your children after you” (Henry as cited in Whitney, 2016, pp. 34-35). Perhaps most striking of all descriptions of family worship is Henry’s declaration that “here must the reformation begin” if we are to experience the revitalization of churches that we long for and earnestly pray would come, then it must begin at home (Henry as cited in Whitney, 2016, p. 34).
In this same vein, Jonathan Edwards, the last and most noteworthy of the American Puritans, famously declared in his 1750 “Farewell Sermon” that every Christian family ought to be as it were a little church, consecrated to Christ, and wholly influenced and governed by His rules” (Edwards as cited in Rienow, 2013, pp. 119-200). An ominous warning was also issued Edwards, namely, that if families are not filled with the disciplined Christian graces of worship, evangelism, discipleship, fellowship, training, and service then “all other means are likely to prove ineffectual” which includes instruction received at church (Edwards as cited in Rienow, 2013, p. 200).
The primacy of family discipleship did not in any way, however, exclude or negate the necessary role of the larger community of faith as the complimentary relationship between the home and church partnership was affirmed by the Puritans (Anthony, 2011, p. 162). Indeed, the churchly function of the household never eclipsed the importance of the gathered people of God in the context of the local church (Stinson, 2011, p. 126).
It must also be noted that neither did the preeminence of parental responsibility preclude regularly scheduled and age-organized gatherings of children and young people for the express purpose of biblical instruction in Christian theology (Anthony, 2011, p. 162). Cotton Mather (1663-1728) recalls belonging to a Sunday evening youth group in New England that involved prayer, singing psalms, and devotions led by peers (Mather as cited in Stinson, 2011, p. 125). In 1674, a resident of Roxbury, Massachusetts, spoke of the restoration of his church’s “primitive practice” of “training up…male youth” through Sunday gatherings for the purpose of examining their memory of the sermon along with recitation of portions from the catechism (the young ladies met on Mondays) (Anthony, 2011, p. 161). Such practices were commonplace and widespread as indicated by church records from Norwich, Connecticut in 1675 and Plymouth, Massachusetts in 1694 (Anthony, 2011, p. 161).
Jonathan Edwards, himself a champion of family ministry, described to a friend in 1743 how he would gather children and youth of his church into groups to reinforce their private instruction received at home as well as the weekly sermons heard on Sundays (Edwards as cited in Stinson, 2011, p. 127). Reinforcing young people’s relationship with the larger community of faith was certainly the goal of these age-organized gatherings coordinated by the Puritans and not to separate them from the congregation as the familiarity of the content was intended to review and apply in this context what had already been proclaimed to them in intergenerational settings in family worship at home and the corporate worship gathering at church (Stinson, 2011, p. 125).
To be continued…Soli Deo Gloria!
References
Anthony, M. & Anthony, M., eds. (2011) A theology for family ministries. Nashville, TN: B&H Academic.
Pollard, J. & Brown, S., eds. (2014) A theology of the family: five centuries of biblical wisdom for family life. Wake Forest, NC: The National Center for Family-Integrated Churches.
Rienow, R. (2013) Limited church: unlimited kingdom – uniting church and family in the great commission. Nashville, TN: Randall House Publications.
Stinson, R. & Jones, T. P., eds. (2016) Trained in the fear of God: family ministry in theological, historical, and practical perspective. Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel Publications.
Whitney, D. S. (2019) Family worship: in the Bible, in history, and in your home. Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books.
