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Our 24 Family Ways: Family Devotional Guide
Children, youth and parents will all enjoy Our 24 Family Ways, a multipurpose family devotional tool that will shape hearts for God and His ways. It's easy to use and hard to forget! This book integra
112 pages, Paperback
First published February 25, 2004
33 people are currently reading
393 people want to read
About the author
Clay Clarkson
19 books95 followersClay Clarkson is director of Whole Heart Ministries, a nonprofit family ministry he and his wife, Sally, started in 1994 to help Christian parents raise wholehearted children for Christ. He is the author of Educating the WholeHearted Child, Our 24 Family Ways, Heartfelt Discipline, Taking Motherhood to Hearts, and The Lifegiving Parent (with Sally Clarkson). He writes online about Christian parenting, imagination, and other biblical topics. Clay is a graduate of Denver Seminary (MDIv) and has served with churches and ministries since 1975. He is also a Christian songwriter and collector of old Christian books. Clay and Sally live in Monument, Colorado. Their four children are grown, following Jesus, and following in their parents' footsteps as writers and creators.
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
March 10, 2014
The Overview
Our 24 Family Ways is a family devotional guide that aids parents in teaching their children twenty-four principles for Biblical living. The twenty-four ways are divided into six categories: Authorities, Relationships, Possessions, Work, Attitudes, and Choices. Each "way" takes one week - Monday through Friday - to work through and also has a reproducible coordinating coloring page. Using this book as it has been designed, gives you twenty-four full weeks of planned family devotional sessions.
The Readability
Personally, at first glance I was confused by the layout of this book. However, after reading the five, short intro pages, I realized that the format of this book is very simple to use. The pictures are appropriate for young ages but the questions seem aimed at upper elementary and may require you to re-word them in order for younger children to fully understand what you are asking them. Since there are only five questions per day, it is simple to glance at them and re-work them as you go, unless you are using this with pre-school and younger.
The Highlights
The main highlight is that it is simple to use and can easily be done with or without extra study. You have a guide that is sufficient for a busy day but also gives you, the parent, room to expand if you choose to do so. I really like a material that allows freedom to make alterations without a lot of effort.
The Downside
While this is a simple and straightforward approach to teaching solid Bible truth to children concerning everyday life, sadly it is also very command centered rather than pointing kids to the grace of God when they are unable to measure up to this set of family "ways". In four weeks of using this material with my own children I found them frustrated that they could never really do what I was teaching them. For example, family way number two is "We read the Bible and pray to God every day with an open heart". When we missed a day that week they became very frustrated and upset rather than applying grace to our family life as well as passionately pursuing God's truth.
The Recommendation
My recommendation for this resources is with a bit of mixed thoughts. While it is a simple, easy-to-use, and organized approach to teaching some solid Biblical principles, I struggle with the fact that the thrust of the Gospel is weak at best. It was best for our family to switch to Exploring Grace Together by Jessica Thompson.
Our 24 Family Ways is a family devotional guide that aids parents in teaching their children twenty-four principles for Biblical living. The twenty-four ways are divided into six categories: Authorities, Relationships, Possessions, Work, Attitudes, and Choices. Each "way" takes one week - Monday through Friday - to work through and also has a reproducible coordinating coloring page. Using this book as it has been designed, gives you twenty-four full weeks of planned family devotional sessions.
The Readability
Personally, at first glance I was confused by the layout of this book. However, after reading the five, short intro pages, I realized that the format of this book is very simple to use. The pictures are appropriate for young ages but the questions seem aimed at upper elementary and may require you to re-word them in order for younger children to fully understand what you are asking them. Since there are only five questions per day, it is simple to glance at them and re-work them as you go, unless you are using this with pre-school and younger.
The Highlights
The main highlight is that it is simple to use and can easily be done with or without extra study. You have a guide that is sufficient for a busy day but also gives you, the parent, room to expand if you choose to do so. I really like a material that allows freedom to make alterations without a lot of effort.
The Downside
While this is a simple and straightforward approach to teaching solid Bible truth to children concerning everyday life, sadly it is also very command centered rather than pointing kids to the grace of God when they are unable to measure up to this set of family "ways". In four weeks of using this material with my own children I found them frustrated that they could never really do what I was teaching them. For example, family way number two is "We read the Bible and pray to God every day with an open heart". When we missed a day that week they became very frustrated and upset rather than applying grace to our family life as well as passionately pursuing God's truth.
The Recommendation
My recommendation for this resources is with a bit of mixed thoughts. While it is a simple, easy-to-use, and organized approach to teaching some solid Biblical principles, I struggle with the fact that the thrust of the Gospel is weak at best. It was best for our family to switch to Exploring Grace Together by Jessica Thompson.
December 30, 2022
I enjoyed working through this book with my kids during Morning Time. Its basic premise is to teach them Christian virtues/character qualities. Each quality is stated in the declarative as a "family way": "We listen to correction and accept discipline with a submissive spirit"; "We choose to be joyful even when we feel like complaining"; "We ask before we act when we do not know what is right to do." I appreciated the attitude of "This is what we do" vs. "This is what we should do." It's akin to God telling Gideon he's a mighty warrior when he's still cowering--giving my kids the garments they are to grow into.
The book is set up with five short devotionals for each virtue. Each devotional begins with a thought-provoking question to get their heads and hearts engaged with the issue at hand. There are two possible questions to choose from, and I usually just chose one. This was my favorite part of the devotional, and this book taught me to use this technique for heart engagement when reading Bible passages with my kids on my own.
From there, there's a short passage of Scripture related to the virtue. This, to me, was uneven. Sometimes I did not readily see the connection of the passage to the character quality in question. Sometimes I chose to do other passages that I thought were obvious for that character quality, but that the Clarksons did not include. Thankfully, the devotional format they use is set up to be able to edit on the fly like this.
The next part of the devotion is three or four questions about the Scripture we just read. Again, sometimes I didn't think the questions were especially helpful. Sometimes I only used one of the questions. SOMETIMES they spawned amazing discussions that left us all enjoying and appreciating God's ways more. Each devotion ends with ideas for prayer, which I would use to begin prayer for school that day.
Each Family Way also has a Scripture memory verse and a coloring page that the kids can prepare for hanging on the wall to help us remember and recite the family ways as we go through them. I didn't use the memory verses, as we do our own Scripture memory for school, but I did use the coloring pages. These pictures are very useful for reference. Memorizing the family ways has also been useful for dealing with daily sin situations.
By now it's pretty obvious that the book is a great tool, full of ideas you CAN use but that you don't HAVE to use. In many ways I felt the book was training me in how to use Scripture to explain Christian behavior to my kids. As time went on, I was more able to adapt, to select the questions that would prove most helpful, and to lead discussions afterward.
With 24 family ways and 5 devotions for each, this book took us a looooooong time to get through. I think it took us over a year, because we didn't get to it every school day. There's also the fairly large caveat that this book is designed to teach Christian behaviors, but NOT the basis of Christianity. It deals with obedience, attitudes, and work ethic; it does not preach the Gospel. I didn't mind this because we do several other more Gospel-centered devotional things with our kids throughout the day. But I did add our "Main Family Way," which we recited every day to help us remember the good of the Gospel: "When we fail at a family way, we know that because of Christ, God is for us." (The only problem with this was that they then wanted a coloring page for it, as well, which I was then compelled to provide.)
The book is set up with five short devotionals for each virtue. Each devotional begins with a thought-provoking question to get their heads and hearts engaged with the issue at hand. There are two possible questions to choose from, and I usually just chose one. This was my favorite part of the devotional, and this book taught me to use this technique for heart engagement when reading Bible passages with my kids on my own.
From there, there's a short passage of Scripture related to the virtue. This, to me, was uneven. Sometimes I did not readily see the connection of the passage to the character quality in question. Sometimes I chose to do other passages that I thought were obvious for that character quality, but that the Clarksons did not include. Thankfully, the devotional format they use is set up to be able to edit on the fly like this.
The next part of the devotion is three or four questions about the Scripture we just read. Again, sometimes I didn't think the questions were especially helpful. Sometimes I only used one of the questions. SOMETIMES they spawned amazing discussions that left us all enjoying and appreciating God's ways more. Each devotion ends with ideas for prayer, which I would use to begin prayer for school that day.
Each Family Way also has a Scripture memory verse and a coloring page that the kids can prepare for hanging on the wall to help us remember and recite the family ways as we go through them. I didn't use the memory verses, as we do our own Scripture memory for school, but I did use the coloring pages. These pictures are very useful for reference. Memorizing the family ways has also been useful for dealing with daily sin situations.
By now it's pretty obvious that the book is a great tool, full of ideas you CAN use but that you don't HAVE to use. In many ways I felt the book was training me in how to use Scripture to explain Christian behavior to my kids. As time went on, I was more able to adapt, to select the questions that would prove most helpful, and to lead discussions afterward.
With 24 family ways and 5 devotions for each, this book took us a looooooong time to get through. I think it took us over a year, because we didn't get to it every school day. There's also the fairly large caveat that this book is designed to teach Christian behaviors, but NOT the basis of Christianity. It deals with obedience, attitudes, and work ethic; it does not preach the Gospel. I didn't mind this because we do several other more Gospel-centered devotional things with our kids throughout the day. But I did add our "Main Family Way," which we recited every day to help us remember the good of the Gospel: "When we fail at a family way, we know that because of Christ, God is for us." (The only problem with this was that they then wanted a coloring page for it, as well, which I was then compelled to provide.)
Read
April 3, 2023I used this book as a companion to our school year: 24 weeks of community, 24 family ways. So we did one each week, taking a break whenever our community had a break. Was an excellent way to slowly but consistently work through these. The scriptures were our focus as we talked about how to apply it — or talk about how we messed up & can change how we react next time.
May use this again because the emphasis & convos complimented our school schedule so well!
May use this again because the emphasis & convos complimented our school schedule so well!
September 27, 2020
This is a great resource to use not just within a family setting but also in a catechetical setting with young students.
April 17, 2023
We read this as our school devotion. It was perfect. It made my kids really think and looked at topics/character traits that we really needed to work on.
April 24, 2023
We loved this book and will more than likely go through it again with the kids in the future!
August 17, 2024
This is our family’s favorite devotional! We try to do it every couple of years.
March 27, 2020
This didn't work well with our family. It really felt like a set of standards we had to live up to. And 24 of them! Being a family that seeks God isn't that complicated. In our family we prefer to focus on loving ourselves and others, extending and receiving grace, and always being open to what God is teaching us and how God is changing us. With the 24 ways we felt overwhelmed and judged. We stopped halfway through the book and donated it.
December 30, 2025
Great if you're looking for some structure or a place to get started.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews