In my first call to ministry, I served a small farming congregation outside Edmonton. It was some of the most fertile farmland in Alberta, fed by the North Saskatchewan River. Since the mid-1800s, German immigrants had settled there having moved from the western parts of Russia. Serving that community was almost like stepping back in time, many members remembered when electric lights came to their farms. They recalled riding to church in horse, buggy, or horse and sleigh.
The pastors of that community often served in a multiplicity of roles. They were also the local teacher, sometimes doctors, legal experts, and even postmasters! Confirmation was usually all day Saturday and included German language education, along with filling in the gaps that the local one-room grade school missed.
When I began serving, it was expected that I would attend the monthly Evangelical Lutheran Women’s (ELW) Bible Study. As we studied various things, I quickly discovered that many of the women could still recall much of the Small Catechism by heart, which they memorized in Confirmation classes. At the time, it felt like a curious artifact of history.
Over the years in the ministry, I have continued to encounter Lutherans who could still recall the Small Catechism by heart (my mother is one of them!). I have come to see this less curious artifact of history and more blessing born in some brief teenage suffering in Confirmation class.
The more and more I study Luther, and his theology, the more I am becoming convinced that despite those Lutherans of a certain vintage who can remember their catechism by heart, we, as clergy and church leaders, have mostly done a poor job of catechizing the people we serve.
Last fall, as I prepared to teach the Lord’s Prayer to our confirmation class, I couldn’t help but wonder at how Luther’s explanation of the Lord’s Prayer is still so relevant today.
‘People should know this!” was the constant refrain in my head. As I have done Adult Study in the past and in the various other venues I have been privileged to teach, I have witnessed a hunger to know more and to go deeper. Even among confirmands — who might be the age where being interested in all this faith stuff is the most difficult — there has been an interest in learning the faith.
Before Christmas, I decided that teaching the catechism was something that I would do more. Starting on Sundays after worship, I will be inviting anyone who wants to join me, to grab a coffee following worship and have a brief discussion on one part of the Small Catechism. One of the commandments, one of the seven petitions of the Lord’s Prayer, or one line of one of the articles of the creed. The conversations won’t be long, maybe ten or twenty minutes, depending on what depths we can mine together. I hope to do this most Sundays.
For several weeks, I was very proud of myself for coming up with this “Coffee and Catechism” idea. Until last week, through study and research, I discovered that my idea was not original at all. During the Reformation, the reformers would regularly preach on the catechism during the week, expecting that the children of Wittenberg would attend – along with the parents that brought them! Catechetical teaching was an important means of teaching the faith to people. Even then, it was not an original Reformation idea either. In the first three hundred years of the Church, when most converts were adults, as converts prepared for baptism through the season of Lent, the local Bishop would come and unveil the mysteries of God by teaching the 10 Commandments, the Creed and the Lord’s Prayer.
So I might not be so original or brilliant, but I hope I am in good company. Most importantly, however, learning the faith is not something we do once in a couple of years when we are 13 years old, but something we continually come back to and learn again.
The Millennial Pastor 