Parents: Keep Reality Before Your Children: Cat-e-che-sis

Cat-e-chesis does NOT ensure lots of yawning for you, your kids, or your cats.

Let's cut to the chase: the word "catechism" (and its family of words "catechesis" and "catechize") is not popular in evangelicalism.  For most people, including myself, it rings of lifeless memorization and Wednesday night boredom.  Here in Wisconsin, a huge percentage of the population is Roman Catholic.  And, while I don't mean to needlessly offend anyone, Roman Catholicism has some pretty unhelpful stuff in tow, including a denial of the Gospel.  For my part, the tradition I grew up in, Lutheranism, maintains a good deal of the traditionalism but changes some of the theology.  But in all, assumptions are made about people being "Christian" because they've joined the church or been baptized.  And those assumptions are played out, sadly, in the realm of relating to kids - assuring them that their standing before God is equal to their standing in the church.  I realize that there's a small minority who may not reflect this, but to be fair, the vast majority do.  What's more, the official teaching of Catholicism and Lutheranism reflect an understanding that a child is saved by virtue of his relationship to the church and the act of baptism itself or the exercise of the faith of his parents in baptism.  This post isn't about Catholicism or Lutheranism, but our rejection of them has also affected our neglect of a really helpful tool, which is the topic for today: catechizing our children.

My relationship toward using a catechism with our kids is fairly spotty.  I never gave much thought to using it as a discipleship tool for my girls, though I have great respect for confessions and catechisms that are biblically faithful.  The idea just didn't seem particularly interesting to me in leading my home.  Before I go into anything about using a catechism, I want to relate to you a personal story that can hopefully pique your interest if you're looking for a way to get truth before your kids "systematically," which is really all a catechism does.  The story goes like this...

Early on in January of this year, someone from the Watchtower Society came by our home.  She was looking for the previous tenant, who clearly doesn't live here.  But I took some time to share the Gospel with her and she seemed genuinely interested and challenged.  The next week, she came back to the door with a man who clearly had no intention of hearing the Gospel, but trying to stamp out the truth with the false teaching of the JW's.  The conversation lasted much longer than it should have, but afterwards, something changed about our Lydia.  She no longer wanted to pray or say "God."  Rosalie and I were torn up about it.  We talked with her, prayed for her, and tried to understand what had happened.  However, just over a week ago, I printed out a copy of Charles Spurgeon's catechism to use as a family (which is essentially the Westminster Shorter Catechism with Baptistic distinctives and a little more and less at a few points).  When Lydia was 1 or 2, we taught her question 1, "What is the chief end of man?"  And at the end of a day that was particularly discouraging concerning the above, we sat down and I dusted off old question 1.  And that night, with my little girl on my lap, she answered question 1.  I wept for joy over our little one's freedom from whatever fear had held her for the past few months.  Since then, she's asking almost every day if we can do our catechism time.  Praise God for this change of heart in our daughter!

I share this with you both to speak of what God has done and to encourage you to consider how great a blessing the use of a catechism might be in your home.  Honestly, as much as I value the truth in the catechism, until recently I never gave much thought to the long-term impact of memorizing truth together as a family this way.  And a couple years ago, I never thought that the words I was repeating with my daughter about "man's chief end" would be the magnet point to draw her heart back.

Using a catechism does not have to be a mess of boredom.  It really doesn't.  And I'll share with you, in a second, how our family has embraced it.  But I want first of all to affirm this: a catechism is a condensed packaging of biblical truth intended to build a worldview in our minds and hearts.  It's foundation work.  While God's Word is itself our only certain foundation, a good catechism has taken the truth of God's Word and distilled it so that a good deal of truth can be communicated in a sentence or two.  Helpful is the best word, at the least, to describe the right use of a catechism.  It is not a substitute for Bible memory or for reading through the Bible with your family.  But it communicates the truth of the Bible in a way that is accurately and easily remembered.  It's the "Cliff Notes" of systematic theology.  And instead of tackling Grudem or Berkhof, a catechism is a great place to go as a family, because, frankly, my daughters aren't in a position to do much more than look at a page and think about how it could be best colored.  The catechism gives you a great advantage in training your children because you're learning it together and it has so helpfully done the work of parceling up truth into manageable packages.  So, what and how?

So You Want Some Tips, Eh?

• A good catechism is (not that) hard to find.  In reality, it isn't that tough.  There are some helpful ones out there.  As a Reformed Baptist, I can't completely endorse Westminster or Heidelberg, though they both are extremely important in the history of the church.  We use Charles Spurgeon's catechism, which is essentially Westminster with the appropriate adjustments.  The language is "kind of" antiquated, but it preserves a sense of historicity at the same time, which we value in our home.  Spurgeon's is 82 questions long and the answers are meaty.  Here's a link to Spurgeon's Catechism.
• Don't sell your kids short.  Like Scripture memorization, you'd really be surprised to find out how much your kids can memorize.  And how old and out of shape our memories are (yikes!).  Because every family has a different dynamic, it's really important that you get a feel for where your little ones are at.  But here's the (kind-of) fun part: challenge them!  They may really enjoy tackling things that seem bigger than what they suppose is possible.
• Don't rush it.  I know it's tempting to want to have all 82 questions answered in as many days.  But unless you're living at a monastic retreat center with your family (and haven't been asked to leave because the kids disrupt the painful solitude), it's just not realistic to expect things to sink in right away.  I think this is particularly the case when your family culture has been missing these kind of elements over a longer period of time.  If you're just now realizing that handing over an XBox controller to your 10 year old for 3 hours a day over the past 3 years is not a good idea, don't expect him to immediately understand why you've pulled the plug and are sitting down to memorize something that's more than fifteen times older than he is.  God has been patient with you and you can be patient with your children.  Even if you've hit the ground running with a solid handle on family life, just remember where your kids are spiritually.  If your 6 year old hasn't made a profession of faith, then it's just not appropriate to expect that he'll be champing at the bit over these things.  So be patient and keep plugging away at it.
• Make it special.  I love the fact that our families have unique cultures.  We have friends who climb trees with their kids and run around outside all day.  We're kind of homebodies who like to cook and take walks and special trips to Target together.  Our families reflect who they are composed of.  And because of that, you have the opportunity to recognize what is special and valued (culturally) in your home and play off that in your family worship life.  Here is an example from our home: we do "special treats" as ways of spicing up the day.  So I'll randomly tell Lydia "I have a question for you..." and then get into a catechism question, letting her know that if she can answer it, we'll get a special treat at the store.  It doesn't always have to be that way, but that's something fun to attach to that time.  (Though I've also made clear that we give her the treat because we love her and want to be gracious to her, not because she's storing up merits!)  For the catechism itself (and I'm sorry to sound like I'm on Pinterest, which I'm not - though Rosalie is and she keeps me posted on what she finds), I formatted the questions in a decent font, put a page border up, and printed them out on nice cotton resume paper.  Then I glued those to some heavier stock paper.  I finished it off with some wood-pattern scrapbook paper reinforced with heavier stock for the covers and hole punched the edge.  And to offset the use of the term "scrapbook paper," I burned the edges of the paper to give it an "old" look and bound the edge with some ribbon.  Then I dedicated it on the inside.  So the catechism itself actually looks neat and it's something that we can hold on to and have some importance attached to its being made.  As well, I plan to have a special party when each of our kids has been able to memorize the whole thing, giving them a "diploma" and celebrating as a family.  It'll probably mean a night at a hotel, a nice meal, and some time fun swimming time in the hotel pool.  Maybe it'll be a picnic at the zoo.  But I want them to know that what they've been able to do, by the grace of God, matters a lot.  However you might choose to do it, you have an opportunity to hold out time spent over a catechism as something fun, special, and important and you have the freedom to pursue options that make it moreso to your family.  Not everyone would enjoy putting together a bound copy of the catechism and that's okay.  Just find something that can communicate to your family that this is special.
• Remember the heart.  One big difference between using a solid catechism and one that's off-target (like the Roman Catholic Catechism) is the content.  That's obvious - we don't want to teach our kids falsehood.  That's why we turn to a good, solid, biblical catechism.  But the danger, even in using an orthodox and truth-laden catechism, is the temptation to forget the heart and focus so much on making sure everything is being memorized to the letter.  Memorization is good.  But it's even better to go through the questions, read the Scripture "proofs" attached to each answer, and talk about what the truth means.  The verse that is included over our catechism is 2 Timothy 2:15 and we try to recite that every time we come to review the questions as a family.  It gives context and purpose and grounds it in God's Word.  So be careful that you don't get so caught up with little Billy memorizing so much and grasping so little.

So there are some thoughts about catechesis.  It's a word that's loaded with a lot of strange assumptions and rightfully so, at least around these parts.  But for the family hoping in Christ together, using a catechism can be a downright refreshing and enjoyable thing.  I can tell your from the experience I shared with you above, that it has definitely been used by God that way in our home.  And our goal in all of this is that we might keep the reality of Scripture before our little ones by serving them these condensed statements of truth that they can think about and not have to wander as they think about "What does the Bible say about...?"  Ultimately, it's a tool - and I think, a good one.  Lord willing, in a couple days we'll look at "reading time" with our little ones.

To God Alone Be the Glory,
-Chris