Gather The Family

I am a huge fan of Franklin Springs Family Media.  When I saw that they were looking for bloggers to review their movies, I jumped at the chance.  I asked to review Gather The Family, because we do family worship, and I was curious to see how other families handle it.

This film profiles about 8 families from many different walks of life.  A doctor's family, a plumber, a single mom, a former professional baseball player.  Some of the families have lots of kids, some have just a few.  One family has their first child who is 12 months old.  

When I watched this film with my children the other day, Lindsay age 19 said "I thought it was good that the film used different families all at different stages in their lives. They broke it up into a general overview then families with small kids, older kids , lots of kids….father lead, but also addressed that many families today don’t have both parents in the home."


The film's format is to introduce the families and their basic thoughts about family worship and why they do it.  It then moves on to answering different questions people wonder about such as how to do family worship when you only have young children and just what do you do?  Does the Dad have to preach a sermon? 

Kyle who is almost six said "Well what I learned is that um they read the bible and they believed and the people prayed for the people in their church and the people that don’t believe.  The one mom didn’t grow up in a Christian family and didn’t know what to do until that time."  I love to hear what his understanding of something is.  And this I believe is a beautiful thing about family worship.  Children can get quite a bit out of what we read together as a family.  My husband said this morning "I am impressed with how much Kyle remembers from our times reading the word together."

Our family does practice family worship, though not as regularly as we would like.  We often have called it 'devotions' but after hearing a quote in this film, I don't think we will again.  R.C. Sproul, Jr. states "Devotions sounds like some duty you have to do to show God you like Him a lot.  Worship is entering into His glory and that is what all of our lives are supposed to be."  I like that.

The daughter in the single mom home said that at first it was awkward when they started to do family worship.  Now it is a time that the all look forward to.  I have found this true in our family, as well.

If you have a desire to help your children to make God a priority in their lives, and if you have been wondering what it is like to practice family worship, I encourage you to get this film and watch it.  Then pass it on to every family you know!  It will make a difference in your lives!

As with all Franklin Springs movies that I have seen, it is beautifully filmed and has great music in it.  This one is filled with background music by Nathan Clark George, a personal favorite of mine. 

Thanks, to Franklin Springs for providing me with a pre-release copy of this film and for the privilege of reviewing it.