Shortly after I was converted I got involved in a church/denomination which rejected the idea of church membership. As a result there was nothing formal in place for new converts to be instructed in the newly embraced faith. The next church I attended did practice church membership. Not much was required to become a member. Those interested in membership met a couple of times with the pastor in order to share our conversion story/experience.

The church of God will never be preserved without catechesis.John Calvin

As with the first church I attended, there was no instruction about the rudimentary points of the faith or of the distinctive doctrines of the church. This has not always been the case, though. During the Reformation Luther and Calvin recognized the overwhelming majority of professing Christians knew very little about the faith they professed. As a result the reformers “restored the office of catechist to the churches” (p. 23), wherein “entire congregations were instructed through unapologetically catechetical preaching, regular catechizing of children in Sunday worship, and, in many cases, through the renewed practice of congregational singing of psalms and hymns” (p. 23). Both Luther and Calvin wrote out basic catechisms for the training of children and converts, recognizing, as Calvin put it, that “the church of God will never be preserved without catechesis” (p.23). It is worth noting that the practice of catechizing is a distinctly reformed practice because many sincere Christians with very sensitive “that seems Roman Catholic to me” meters often regard catechesis as a Roman Catholic holdover. To the contrary, the Roman Catholic practice came as a response to the growing influence of the Protestant catechisms (cf. pp. 23; 24). Ironically, in recent decades there has been a renewed interest in and vigor for catechetical instruction with the Roman Catholic church, a renewed and interest and vigor which has not been reciprocated within evangelicalism.

Packer and Parrett rightly recognize that one of the reasons for the neglect of the catechism and catechesis in the West was, ironically, the rise of the lay-driven Sunday school movement of the 1800s which has come to dominate the educational efforts of evangelical church (p. 24) which “effectively replaced pastor-catechists with relatively untrained lay workers and substituted an instilling familiarity (or shall we say, perhaps, overfamiliarity) with Bible stories for any form of grounding in the basic beliefs, practices, and ethics of the faith (p. 24, emphasis in original). This was the direct result of revivalism. The way forward, the authors suggests, is not by looking around for contemporary programs, but in looking back to the ancient paths of the church (Jer. 6.16), ancient paths tread by the likes of Luther, Calvin, Owen, Baxter and Spurgeon, to name a few. Thus, in the words of the title for chapter two, believers are built up “the old fashioned way.”

So our conclusion is the same as it was last week. Dust off your catechism and get busy memorizing. The roots you will sink will provide health and nourishment not only for you but also for the generations to come.