Catechism

Cat-e-what? Catechism. It’s something that I had not heard of until I took a class through DTS. One of my professors suggested three things to us: reading an hour of the Bible every day allowing it to cleanse us (still hoping to find 30 consecutive minutes much less an hour – but this was his suggestion), learn some hymns and to read through a catechism book (Westminster, Heidelberg, etc). I honestly had no idea what he was talking about on the latter one. However, I was soon to meet my reformed husband who knew all about Catechisms and suggested that we read through one together. We decided on the Westminster catechism and that we would do waffles and Westminster on Wed (see how my Baptist upbringing is coming out with the alliterations?!)

Back to the point, basically a catechism is a systematic way to learn the tenets of your faith using a question answer method. Jamison and I made it through a few weeks and then I hate to confess, we weren’t very consistent. I can say that I learned something on the very first week from question 1:

1. What is the chief end of man?
A. Man’s chief end is to glorify God,[1] and to enjoy him forever.[2]


I knew I was here to glorify God but I loved that I could now answer the question in a very concise way! Question / answer works well for me and this is the method that we have chosen to adopt for teaching our kids. We struggled for some time trying to come up with how to teach our kids and then realized that we did not have to reinvent the wheel. There are lots of resources out there, so we did our research and picked one. We purchased the Truth and Grace books to work through with our kids. It gives not only questions for them to learn at each age, it also gives Scripture to memorize with them as well as songs to learn. Some days I do the questions over breakfast, some days I’ll just throw one out there as we go about our day, and some days we don’t do it. The big thing I need to remember right now is to go back and explain to him what he is saying and not just have my goal be for him to answer correctly. Although it is cool that he can answer them, pride goes before the fall and I don’t want to get so caught up in his head knowledge that I forget about the explanation and his heart!

Many of you have asked me how I teach my kids and that is one of the primary ways. Here are the suggested questions for Ages 2-3 out of the TAG book.

1. Who Made You? God made me. (Genesis 1:26,27; Ecclesiastes 12:1; Acts 17:24-29)
2. What else did God make? God made all things. (Genesis 1, Acts 14:15; Romans 11:26; Colossians 1:16)
3. Why did God make you and all things? For His own glory. (Psalm 19:1; Jeremiah 9:23,24; Revelation 4:11, 5:13)
4. How can you glorify God? By loving Him and doing what He commands. (Ecclesiastes 12:13; Mark 12:29-31; John 15:8-10)
5. Why ought you to glorify God? Because He made me and takes care of me. (Romans 11:36; Revelation 4:11)


We were already working on a hymn with him, but the suggested songs for this age are: Jesus Loves Me and the Doxology. We are planning on going back and teaching him these. Remember this is just a suggestion of what you can do, not the ultimate source on what you should do!
Hope this helps some of you moms out there!