A good catechism should be a foundational part of the family worship time
My wife and I began to teach the Children’s Catechism to our six- and eight-year-olds earlier a few years ago. After six months of implementing it, it was clear it has been, and will be, one of the most important things we have ever done as parents. These children already know more doctrinal truth than I did as a young adult.
It is a beautiful and wonderful thing to teach my kids the catechism, and to see them learning and memorizing it. Sadly, I have never known anyone personally, who was steeped in a catechism from their early years, but I am very excited to think of the cumulative effect of continuing with the catechism with them daily.
The catechism points are so rich and concise that once put to memory, they seem to form a structure of truth that the learner will always have in his life. It’s almost like memorizing the main points to a systematic theology book.
As Terry Johnson says, “catechisms are rich reservoirs of theological, devotional, and practical content. . . Children nurtured on the catechism will be formidable theologians in an age of irrationalism and general mindlessness.”[1]
It is sad that parents expect their kids to know so much secular information, but they assume that biblical matters and doctrine are too lofty for them to learn about at a young age. For some strange reason, parents often think that a child can handle math, algebra, biology, chemistry, and etc…, but they seem to always be too young to for the deeper things of God. This is nonsense, and definitely not true.
Our kids memorized and learned over 50 questions of the Shorter Catechism in only 6 months. The actual time spent in catechism is only five to eight minutes, four to five days per week. But what an impact those few minutes will have in their lives!
Continuing through the catechism helps us to move through biblical concepts without getting stuck on the same ones for too long or not getting to others at all.
One father, that I gave a copy of Sinclair’s family devotion book, Big Book of Questions and Answers, to told me that he mainly just told his kids about Moses and Noah before I gave him the book. This might be an extreme example, but I believe many well-meaning Christian parents are guilty of something very similar. Often, they know they should do something, but don’t know where to start. Then, once they start, they run out of material quickly because they were just relying on some of the lessons that they thought their kids would enjoy. However, this is not the case with a parent who is teaching through a catechism.
Teaching a catechism helps a parent to provide a nutrient-rich, well-balanced diet of biblical truth. It also takes all the stress out of wondering what to teach the children. The catechisms are already structured and well-planned. Much thought by some great men of God have gone into creating catechisms like the Shorter Catechism. So, instead of spending so much time on wondering what to teach a child, a parent can, with the ease of clicking print, begin catechizing their children.
Catechism, a key part of family worship
A catechism is extremely simple to teach, memorize, and review. Ask my kids what they learned in Sunday School last year, and sadly, they will have no clue. Ask them to repeat the catechism, and you’ll get an earful. It really works.
This method was used in the earliest centuries, lost, and revived in the 16th century by the Protestant Reformers. Luther, Calvin, and Bullinger all wrote catechisms. Later the Westminster Confession of Faith was written by the collection of the Westminster Divines and became the most common catechism. Even later, as Baptists realized the power of a catechism, they wrote their own London Baptist Confession of 1689.
All of this was done as a measure to instill doctrine into believers, and it worked. Hopefully, we will once again realize that it has worked and still will work if we get back to it.
In 1928, the Presbyterian Church had 17,000 youth who had memorized the Shorter Catechism and had their names published in the Christian Observer.[1]
It has been done by hundreds of thousands of young people, and today’s child is no different. It is truly not whether a child can learn this type of information, but today it is more about whether a parent is willing to teach it.
Dr. Trey Talley, Lead Pastor and Elder
[1]: Terry L. Johnson, The Family Worship Book: A Resource Book for Family Devotions (Fearn, Ross-shire, Great Britain: Christian Focus Publications, 1998), 11.