My wife and I have tried to make Scripture memory a part of our family worship times, but we’ve struggled over the years to make this consistent.
We began when our children were very young simply reciting through whole chapters of the Bible together every day, and this was actually very effective in memorizing large portions. We began with Psalm 100, Psalm 23, and Philippians 2. The poetic passages were easier, but we found that even our 2 year old eventually was able to recite those whole Psalms simply by listening and then slowly participating with us as we recited them each day. I highly recommend this practice for large, poetic portions of Scripture.
Lately, however, we’ve wanted to develop some more structure to our memory as a family. Becky discovered a system that is excellent and that we’ve begun implementing as part of our regular family worship.
The system works with really any series of passages (long or short) that you’d like your family to memorize, but here is a recommended list.
The system uses the method I recommended above, but adds some structure so that you can regularly review and retain what you’ve learned. Very simply, each week you recite the week’s passage every day. The next week you choose a new passage, but you move the previous week’s passage to a review stage every other day. Following that, the passage moves to once per week and then once per month. This way you are regularly reviewing what you’ve already learned as you add new passages. Here is video that explains the system:
My wife printed these verse cards, bought a file box with tabs, and now we’ve begun implementing the system as part of our family worship.
About Scott Aniol
Scott Aniol is the founder and Executive Director of Religious Affections Ministries. He is director of doctoral worship studies at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, where he teaches courses in ministry, worship, hymnology, aesthetics, culture, and philosophy. He is the author of Worship in Song: A Biblical Approach to Music and Worship, Sound Worship: A Guide to Making Musical Choices in a Noisy World, and By the Waters of Babylon: Worship in a Post-Christian Culture, and speaks around the country in churches and conferences. He is an elder in his church in Fort Worth, TX where he resides with his wife and four children. Views posted here are his own and not necessarily those of his employer.
