Rebuilding the Family Altar

By Dr. Clint Ritchie

Families are in crisis, and as a result, so is society. The number of children who are leaving the church and completely walking away from the faith is alarming. All of this is part of a deeper issuefamilies have stopped worshiping together at home.

Dr. Clint Ritchie examines the change in family worship in Rebuilding the Family Altar and challenges parents to accept their God-given role as the leader in the spiritual development of their children. Ritchie provides a biblical foundation for the family altar, examines key elements of family worship, and offers fifty-two family worship devotionals.

Rebuilding the Family Altar stresses the need for parents to include more than church attendance in their childrens spiritual journey. This resource strives to bring the church and parents together to revive family worship.

With the precision of a surgeons scalpel, Dr. Ritchie dissects the cause of todays family struggles. With clarity he goes step by step in diagnosing the issues and along with it, offers solid biblical examples of how to move forward to be the family that God desires and to aid parents, even includes a years Bible study. This book, with Gods guidance, will convict parents and create a new, sold-out generation for His glory.

Rev. John Yates, John Yates Ministry, LLC

• Language: English
• Publisher: WestBow Press
• Release date: Apr 4, 2016
• ISBN: 9781490888354

Dr. Clint Ritchie

Dr. Clint Ritchie is a graduate of Williams Baptist College, Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, and New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary. He and his wife, Jennifer, have two daughters. They currently live in Yazoo City, Mississippi, where Dr. Ritchie serves as pastor of First Baptist Church.

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Endorsements

As Pastor Clint Ritchie so accurately states, The family is God’s way of preserving faith in him to the next generation. In this book, he shows how important the family altar is in preserving the family itself. Listen to his practical and proven suggestions that will strengthen the family and strengthen the faith. We so need this encouragement today!

Dr. Frank Page

CEO of the Southern Baptist Convention

Nashville, Tennessee

As a beneficiary of a family altar, I was delighted to see the book that Dr. Ritchie has written. Knowing him to be a down-to-earth, godly, and compassionate pastor gave me hope that finally someone had written something to help us rebuild one of the most important institutions in Christendom … the Family Altar. This book instructed and blessed me. What a great message for floundering families!

Dr. Emil Turner

Retired, Executive Director of the Arkansas Baptist State Convention

God has established three institutions: the church, the home, and human government. All three of these institutions, because of their priority and value, are worth preserving and strengthening. It should be noted, however, that due to their importance and value, all three are under constant attack by forces, both internal and external. Clint Richie offers some long-overdue and helpful insights into how the church can support families in their mutually supportive roles. Every pastor, children’s worker, and parent will appreciate the foundational and practical information on the place of a family altar. I pray that this book will stimulate you to reestablish the family altar as a priority in the homes around you.

Dr. Mark Tolbert

Professor of Preaching and Pastoral Ministry

Director of the Doctor of Ministry Program

New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary

Traveling in evangelistic ministry almost 30 years, I have seen all stages of family interaction both inside and outside the walls of the church. With the precision of a surgeon’s scalpel, Dr. Ritchie dissects the cause of today’s family struggles. With clarity he goes step by step in diagnosing the issues and along with it, offers solid biblical examples of how to move forward to be the family that God desires and to aid parents, even includes a year’s Bible study. This book, with God’s guidance, will convict parents and create a new, sold-out generation for His glory.

Rev. John Yates

John Yates Ministry, LLC

Enterprise, Alabama

Rebuilding

the

Family Altar

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DR. CLINT RITCHIE

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Copyright © 2016 Dr. Clint Ritchie.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

WestBow Press

A Division of Thomas Nelson & Zondervan

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Bloomington, IN 47403

www.westbowpress.com

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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Scripture taken from the Holy Bible, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by Biblica, Inc. All rights reserved worldwide. Used by permission. NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION® and NIV® are registered trademarks of Biblica, Inc. Use of either trademark for the offering of goods or services requires the prior written consent of Biblica US, Inc.

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ISBN: 978-1-4908-8834-7 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4908-8835-4 (e)

WestBow Press rev. date: 03/22/2016

Contents

Foreword

Preface

Chapter 1    The Use of the Altar

Chapter 2    The Abandoned Altar

Chapter 3    The Role of the Church

Chapter 4    Biblical Foundation for the Family Altar

Chapter 5    Parental Influence

Chapter 6    Clearing the Hurdles

Chapter 7    The Discipline of Prayer

Chapter 8    The Discipline of Bible Study

Chapter 9    The Discipline of Praise

Chapter 10    Other Family Worship Disciplines

Chapter 11    Start!

Appendix 1:  Weekly Devotionals

Appendix 2:  One Mother’s Story

To Jennifer, the love of my life

Foreword

The need for this type of book is long overdue. This is not a popular teaching in our churches today. People need to know and come to an understanding of what is important in our homes and families. Everything has taken the place of God in our homes, which allows for Satan to find a foothold and destroy the family altar, something that many see in disrepair.

Dr. Ritchie has taken the time to develop a much-needed view of establishing the altar in the home. Families may not look the same, but there is no substitute for the family values in the home. This culture is crying out daily to see a change in what is happening in the home. Tolerance and a cultural shift have created a need to see God placed back in the family where He belongs. Dr. Ritchie has taken something that has been lost and brought back awareness and clarity to developing this shift back to the church. Family ministry has been lost when we just drop kids off, and they are in youth and children ministry locations. This book helps us understand the need to bring God back into the home. I think every parent needs to read this book. Dr. Ritchie understands the difficulty in this process, and he seeks to help develop strategy for your home.

Doug Compton

Evangelist

Doug Compton Ministries

Paragould, Arkansas

Preface

My service in churches, first as a youth minister for three years and for the past ten years as a pastor, has allowed me to see many families at their worst. Parents have shared with me the struggles they have with their children and the burden they have for God to do a work in their lives. In their relationships with their children, they have talked, yelled, cried, disciplined, and attempted other forms of motivation, only to find themselves in my office, the school principal’s office, a counselor’s office, or a police department, wondering where they went wrong.

After witnessing the brokenness of many parents, I attempted to talk to their children and found they have distanced themselves from their parents and their concerns. They are numb to the conversations, pleas, and discipline; they want to be left alone. Those who are toward the end of their high school years can often tell me exactly how many days remain before they can move out of the house and get away from their parents. Still other parents struggle when their children begin college and quit demonstrating the importance of their faith.

When these instances occur, blame is passed back and forth between the parents and children. While there is usually enough fault to go around, there is a failure to recognize the situation as a spiritual attack. Satan loves to destroy the family. Divorce, rebellious children, debt, time restraints, and many other outside influences are used to bring destruction. But he also uses parents who ignore their children’s spiritual development until it is too late.

In my personal discussions with parents struggling with their children, I regularly find parents admitting their shortcomings in developing their children spiritually. They admit they focused on the children receiving a strong education, winning at sports, and having the best stuff. But I took them to church was not enough spiritually.

Instances like these described motivated me to stress ministry to families in my ministry. However, when I became a parent in October 2006, God placed a continual reminder of the importance of children’s spiritual development, as well as their interest in spiritual matters. I have watched my children, now ages seven and three, develop a desire to have the Bible read to them, memorize Scripture verses, and talk about spiritual matters. The innocence of a child has shown me God places this desire into each of us, and it is one’s parents who either feed it or let it starve to death.

I was blessed to grow up in a Christian home that modeled active church participation. However, it was not until I was in college that I was discipled. I was serving as a youth minister and majoring in Christian ministries, yet I was lacking the spiritual maturity I needed. I sought the help of a campus minister to assist me through the MasterLife curriculum to foster my spiritual development. A personal ministry goal is to properly disciple members of the churches I pastor, and I hold firmly to the conviction that the home is the best place for discipleship to occur. I also hold the conviction that parents, specifically fathers, are accountable for the spiritual training they provide, or do not provide, to their children.

The conclusions in this book are based on my pastoral experience and the research performed for the doctor of ministry degree at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary. The project report, Equipping Selected Married Couples with Children of First Baptist Church, Hampton, Arkansas, in Family Worship Disciplines, undergirds this book.

This project would not have been possible without the continual support of my wife, Jennifer. I thank God daily for placing her in my life. The joy of my children, Addison and Whitley, serves as a reminder of the importance of practicing the principles in this book.

I am also thankful for the encouragement from Dr. Mark Tolbert, Dr. Harold Mosley, and Dr. Chris Turner of New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary for planting the idea of this book.

Lastly, I am thankful for the churches I have served. Bethel Station Baptist Church in Paragould, Arkansas; Swifton Baptist Church in Swifton, Arkansas; and First Baptist Church in Hampton, Arkansas, have opened their lives to me, given me opportunities to minister, and laid the foundation for this work. I look forward to impacting families in First Baptist Church of Yazoo City, Mississippi, as I begin serving as their pastor. The couples from Hampton First Baptist Church that participated in the original work made a huge investment, for which I am eternally grateful.

Chapter 1

The Use of the Altar

P eople of every culture commemorate special events in particular ways. They celebrate birthdays by giving gifts and eating birthday cake, they observe holidays with family and close friends at cookouts, and they honor retirements with receptions. Still other events require parades, special programs, or other forms of commemoration not used daily. When a special event occurs, people feel the ingrained need to put plans in place to ensure participants will celebrate and remember the event.

The Old Testament is full of similar occasions in which the people of God commemorated events through the building of altars. Altar building was always directed toward the God of Israel. The people built altars during times of joy, times of sorrow, and times of victory and defeat. Sometimes they built altars as signs of repentance or as reminders of God’s faithfulness. After they built the altars, they offered sacrifices of animals, grain, fruit, wine, or incense on them.

The first altar in the Bible was the one Noah built after the flood. Imagine the joy that filled Noah’s heart as he walked onto dry land from the ark after surviving the flood! As his family and the animals disembarked from the ark, Noah was moved to worship God for His faithfulness and provision, so he built an altar.

When Abraham arrived at the land God sent him to occupy, he built an altar, serving as a symbol of his possession of the land, an accomplishment granted by God. He built other altars to call on the name of the Lord. At one point, God told him to build an altar on which to sacrifice his son, Isaac. Isaac would later become an altar builder himself at Beersheba, after the Lord appeared to him and reconfirmed the promise given to Abraham: I will bless you and will increase the number of your descendants for the sake of my servant Abraham (Genesis 26:24).

Moses constructed an altar and named it Jehovah-Nissi, meaning, The Lord, our banner, in celebration of military victory. Before entering battle, Gideon built an altar after God called him to lead the people of God against the Midianites—the same people from whom