MamaArcher's Blog

The Importance of Catechizing

Today’s focus is on catechizing.  I have met many who dislike the idea of using catechism to teach and train their children but it is a very effective way of teaching and training our children and even ourselves in the doctrines and truths of the Lord.  Catechism is not meant to be a substitute for the word of God by any means.  All catechism questions and answers are drawn from the scripture and point to the scriptures.  Anyone who uses them correctly would never seek to replace the word of God.  That being said let’s move on!

I will continue to reference the booklet Bringing the Gospel to Covenant Children: In Dependency on the Spirit by Joel R. Beeke.

In his booklet, Beeke takes the time to explain exactly what catechizing is and how and where it is mentioned in the New Testament.  He then goes on to say the following:

Parental catechizing is almost a lost art today, to the great loss of families and churches.  John J. Murray writes, “We believe it is the discontinuance of this practice [of catechizing] that we can trace much of the doctrinal ignorance, confusion, and instability so characteristic of modern Christianity.”

Some have said that using a catechism is focusing too much on the teachings of men rather than Christ. I would like to challenge that! That is so far from the truth. Beeke puts it this way.

Their goals were to explain the fundamental teachings of the Bible, to help young people commit the Bible to memory, to make sermons and the sacraments more understandable, to prepare covenant children for confession of faith, to teach them how to defend their faith against error, and to help parents teach their own children.

Who would not want to use such a tool? Especially one that has shown itself effective over the centuries?  Of course, it is a lot of work.  Anything worth value usually is a lot of work.

Puritan evangelism, carried on by preaching, pastoral admonition, and catechizing, took time and skill.  The Puritans were not looking for quick and easy conversions;  they were committed to building up lifelong believers whose hearts, minds, wills, and affections were won to the service of Christ.

Beeke also references a man named Baxter who was installed at Kidderminster at Worcestershire.  He tells of how it was rare for families in his area to honor God in family worship but by the end of his ministry there were streets where every family did so.  Beeke goes on to say…

He could say that of the six hundred converts that were brought to faith under his preaching he could not name one that had backslidden to the ways of the world.  How vastly different was that result compared to the results of today’s evangelists who press for mass conversions, then turn over the hard work of follow-up to others.

There are many resources for catechizing your children and ones that are easy to use. It is definitely a tool that God has used and blessed throughout many years. Let me end with one last quote from the book.

May God help us today to view the evangelizing of our covenant children as a task that involves both bringing the gospel to them and so presenting Christ and the doctrines of grace that believing children may grow in Him. We need to recover the vision of our forebears in our catechizing, such that we view evangelism as entailing both how to come to Christ and how to live out of Christ.