Standards.

Maybe that will be the theme for this entire weekend, I don’t know.

But another standard my dad always set was that we were going to church as a family. Not only did we go to church, but we were to be engaged in church! That meant that we were expected to bring our bible to church, (he would check up on us to see if we had read our bible at home as well), we weren’t allowed to roam the halls when we were supposed to be in another class, and oh yea, you better be paying attention.

I remember him once saying, “You haven’t even been reading your bible! Look at all of that dust on it!”

We attended a small church growing up and the door opened up right into the auditorium. I used to turn around every time the door opened and one day my dad said, “Why do you keep turning around looking at the door? Ain’t nobody coming in to see you!”

To this day, no matter the venue or event, I try to give the speaker my undivided attention out of respect for them, and not turn around to look at everything else going on inside the room.

(Okay, my dad might not say this now-a-days with the fools walking into churches and robbing them!)

So I started thinking.

Dad, have you invited your kids to go to church with you on Father’s Day?

They say that a large group of people only go to church on Mother’s Day and Christmas and/or Easter. The reason Mother’s Day is mentioned is because we as kids know how proud we make our moms when we go to church with them. So why not set the same standard for Father’s Day?

Dad’s if your kids do not care, is it because you never held church attendance very important either?

So if you go to a gospel-centered church with a pastor who doesn’t lay into men for “not stepping up” in his Father’s Day message (one of my pet-peeves, as I’ve never heard a Mother’s Day message blasting women for “not stepping up”…and there are many who do not), invite your kids to church on Father’s Day.

Let us begin creating a new day standard where our children immediately know where dad’s going to be on Sunday, and how proud and blessed we feel before God that he has been so graceful and merciful to us by giving us children that we get to raise for Him.

What a responsibility, a privilege, an honor!

So, who’s going to church with their dad tomorrow and why or why not?

CSD