The Family Table

Dear LEFC Parents,

We hope you had a good Christmas and are preparing for a Christ-centered new year. Here are some nourishing items to set the table for disciple-making in your family this week.

Youth Group Restarting Soon!

Reminder! Youth Group will be taking a Christmas break tonight and next week and will restart on January 5th. Make spiritual growth a priority in 2025 and join us that week, and don’t forget to invite your friends to do the same!

Family Discipleship Conference

Pathway Church writes, “Join us for our 3rd Annual Family Discipleship Conference sponsored by Geneva College. For this year’s event we’ve invited back Cornerstone Wellness, who joined us at our first ever conference! This will be a day full of practical learning, fellowship with other parents, and encouragement for you and your family as we seek to support one another in parenting and discipling our kids to know and love Jesus. The event will take place February 1st from 9am-1pm. The cost is $20/individual and $30/couple. Our youth ministry will be offering a one-day VBS childcare option as a fundraiser for their upcoming Summer Mission trips (requested donation is $10/kid, please pay in-person at registration on February 1. We will accept credit card, check or cash). Registration is now open at familyatpathway.com.”

We would love to see parents from LEFC attend this valuable event. Maybe join up with another family to carpool together, or make it a day out for mom and dad! More information can be found at the link above.

Save the Date for Family Bible Week!

Family Bible week will be held July 7-13, 2025! Save the date and plan to join us for a week of spiritual growth and fellowship. We are also in need of volunteers to join the FBW committee and lead in various areas, from teaching to crafts to decorating. We will soon be recruiting people, so consider whether you might be led to fill one of these needs. See Jordyn Skacel if you would like to volunteer!

“Moses Led the Israelites” Kids Bible Class Devotional

You have free access to a family devotional based on the curriculum our kids are studying each week in KBC! It’s called “The Gospel Project at Home.” Today’s Bible Study is “Moses Led the Israelites” (Volume 1: Unit 4: Session 5), and the devotional can be found at this link.

Visit the Family Ministries page on our website for information about how to access The Gospel Project at Home for the first time.

And for dessert…

This week’s recommendation for family discipleship is to make a plan to ingest the Bible in 2025.

The prophet Jeremiah once prayed, “When your words came, I ate them; they were my joy and my heart’s delight, for I bear your name, O LORD God Almighty” (Jeremiah 15:16, NIV84).

Jeremiah knew that God’s Word could be a delightful banquet, and this is a perfect time of year to make a plan to feed our families the nourishment of the Scriptures.

There are many, many ways to ingest the Bible–apps for your phone, podcasts where it is read to you, Bibles that are laid out in daily readings. The most important thing to do is to pick one and set aside the time to actually do it.

This time of year, I (Pastor Matt) am always recommending the two plans we print out and place in the foyer. One is a Book-At-A-Time Bible Reading Plan which has two readings for each day, alternating between Old and New Testament books. One of the best features of that plan is that there are free days built into the plan for catching up or deeper reflection.

The one I personally do nearly every year was created by the Scottish pastor Robert Murray M’Cheyne about two centuries ago. It has four readings per day and if you follow it you actually will read the whole New Testament and Psalms twice next year!

If you are using that plan, I also highly recommend reading a page out of For the Love of God (Vol 1 and/or Vol 2) by D.A. Carson each day. Carson was one of my professors in seminary and a founder of The Gospel Coalition. Due to poor health, Dr. Carson has recently had to pull back from public ministry, but his writings will continue to help readers understand the Scriptures for years to come. You can actually get these readings in your inbox every day if you sign-up for it. I have used them countless times, including for sermon-preparation.

What if your family read from two of the columns at supper time each day and then discussed them as you ate together? And then you (and the other readers in your household) could read the other two privately.

I was encouraged to learn this week that Bible sales are up 22% in the USA in 2024, including an uptick in first-time Bible buyers. I hope you have your own copy and that you’re making arrangements to get one for each of your kids as they grow in their ability to read. I was asked a couple of times this year for suggestions of good study Bibles for kids, so I put together this annotated wish list to give some recommendations. Let me know if you have questions about Bible-buying. I always recommend that you buy a Bible for the reader your kid will soon be, not the one they are right now.

However you do it, the main thing is to make a plan and then work your plan.

And don’t worry about falling behind. Does it take you and your family two years or more to make it through a plan? No problem. The point is to get back to reading if you miss a day or so. We don’t stop eating just because we missed a meal! Remember, God’s Words are a delightful feast.

We hope your family eats it right up!

Jordyn Skacel, Director of Family Ministry
Matt Mitchell, Pastor