Introduction
Daily worship for fathers who lead their households.
The Family Altar is a daily reading for fathers who lead their households in the worship of God. There is an episode for each day from Monday to Saturday, and each one runs about a quarter of an hour.
Every episode opens with a psalm from the Scottish Psalter of 1650. Then come two chapters of Scripture, read from the Geneva Bible of 1599, the Bible of the English Reformation. The readings follow the calendar Robert Murray M'Cheyne gave his congregation in 1842, which carries a household through the whole Bible in a year: the Old Testament once, and the New Testament and the Psalms twice.
After the Scripture comes the Heidelberg Catechism, one Lord's Day for each week, so that a father and his children learn the same question together. The episode then gives a short reading from the Reformers and Puritans on the duties of a household, and a prayer from the same faithful men. It closes by naming the chapters for the family table that evening, with the question of the week.
On Saturday the Belgic Confession takes the place of the catechism, and the episode prepares the household for the Lord's Day. On the Lord's Day the father takes his household to the assembly of the saints, and the podcast is silent.
The Geneva text is given in modern spelling. Its words, its word order, and its thee and thou stand as the translators left them, because thou is one man and ye is many, as in the Hebrew and the Greek. Where the Hebrew has the name of God, the reading says Yahweh.
Every reading comes from those historic sources. The only words added are the few plain lines that introduce each part.
Ken Duffy made The Family Altar out of love for the church and grief over her sickness, longing to see households restored and fathers back in their place, one table at a time. He made it first for his own household, and it is free to every father who will use it. Begin at Week One on any Monday. The first week is released on Monday, the twelfth of October. The text of every episode, and a way to keep your place on more than one device, are at kenduffy dot net, slash altar.