In this episode, Nate and Ben talk about the importance of catechesis, a long standing practice for passing on the Christian faith from one generation to the next. This episode is an introduction to an on-going series of short episodes on the questions and answers in the New City Catechism.
The article that Ben mentions can be found here.
In this episode, Nate and Ben talk about the importance of catechesis, a long standing practice for passing on the Christian faith from one generation to the next. This episode is an introduction to an on-going series of short episodes on the questions and answers in the New City Catechism.
The article that Ben mentions can be found here.
Welcome to another episode of the Olive Life Podcast. I'm your host, nate Claiborne, here today again, actually with Pastoral Formation and Mission.
Speaker 2:Benjamin Cant Nate, looking forward to talking about catechesis with you.
Speaker 1:That's right. We realized even in the recording of this is a special Thursday. You guys get two Olive Life episodes for the price of one. But we realized we talked a lot about catechism question one but really we should have prefaced it with its own intro about what catechesis is. That's not a word I think we throw around casually. It's something we've all experienced in different parts of our lives, something that we all do if we have children. Even if we don't have children, we're still catechizing in various ways, and we'll get into that in a few minutes. But I figured it would be helpful to just have a second episode that just does a little bit of a deep dive on what is catechesis, why are we doing it, how do we do it, and then that's going to give a little more context for what our hopes are for the new city catechism this year. That's great.
Speaker 2:Well, maybe we can begin with a story, because I heard this story from a pastor named Ray Orland Jr and it just stuck with me because I really appreciated it. The story is something like this there was a US Army officer and he was in a city that was in the western part of the US back when the language of the wild west was created. There was violent rioting going on in this city and the streets were overrun by a dangerous crowd. He was walking. This officer was walking through the streets and he noticed another man who had this combination of calmness and firmness and composure, even though there was a crowd that was surrounding him. That was uproarious and intense. They passed each other and as they passed each other, each of them turned around and looked over their shoulder at the one that they just passed. The stranger walks up to the officer and puts his finger in his chest and he says what is the chief end of man? The officer replies man's chief end is to glorify God and to enjoy him forever. Then the stranger goes I knew you were a shorter catechism boy by your looks. He said why? That was just what I was thinking of you. There's this like.
Speaker 2:I think it's a true story, from what I gather. There's something so rich in that which is there's something about being so deeply rooted in the theology of our faith that it actually gives you a calmness and a composure in a Wild West riot or in the tumultuous times we live in today. I think it's the subtitle of JI Packer's book on this topic. His book's called Grounded in the Gospel, but the subtitle's really great. It's called Building Believers the Old-Fashioned Way. I love that. In other words, the church for 2,000 years have been catechizing using a catechism with a question and answer format to teach children and new believers the faith. But only recently have we kind of departed from that model or that practice, which is why people like JI Packer are writing books saying hey, let's bring back this old way of grounding people in the gospel.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, and we? I would love to do this but we don't have as much time right now but just tracing why catechism was so important in the early church and even through, you know, the Middle Ages, medieval church in early in the Reformation, and then it's really been only in the past few hundred years that we've seen a significant decline in it. So it seems normal to not catechize at the moment. But in the history of Christianity it's an abnormality. That's right.
Speaker 2:In fact, to your point about the early church, it was, it was not, it was a normal thing that somebody would be interested in Christianity, and there would be anywhere from one to two years, even three years sometimes, of preparation before they were allowed baptism, and in that preparation they were catechized in primarily three things they would learn the Ten Commandments, which is how to love. They would learn the Lord's prayer, which is teaching you how to hope, and they would learn the Apostle's Creed, which is teaching you the faith. And so faith, hope and love was the basis of catechesis at that point. And so you know, as you said, even the Reformation didn't throw away, as if this was some sort of Catholic idea, that we would catechize. And the reason for that is is that the Reformers and we to this day take very seriously the idea of sola scriptura, that scripture alone is our authoritative God for faith and life, and so the Bible itself actually encourages catechesis. So the word is a. It comes from the Greek word for which is catechia, which means to instruct or to teach.
Speaker 2:If you read Galatians six, six, it says let the one who is taught the word or the word there is cat, catechia. That's where this, this idea comes from. So the one who you could, you could say it this way let the one who is catechized with the word share all good things with the one who catechizes. That would be a proper, very literal translation of Galatians six, six. But even that Paul is a very good student of the Hebrew Bible.
Speaker 2:And so he goes back to the book of Exodus, where things like this are said in Exodus 13, 14. It says and this is right in the midst of the actual Exodus out of Egypt and the Passover, and it says in when, in time to come, your son asks you, what does this mean? You shall say to him by a strong hand, the Lord brought us out of Egypt from the house of slavery. In other words, god actually told Moses to teach the people of Israel to catechize their kids, to use this question and answer format that the kids would come and say things like dad, what's the chief end of man? Your kids are not asking you that question, but they would ask questions about the faith. They would ask I mean, my little boy asks me often questions that I have a hard time answering things like why is God invisible? And I'm just like God, dude, I don't, you know why is God invisible?
Speaker 1:Help me, lord, there's a prayer in that moment, I don't know. What do you think?
Speaker 2:Exactly exactly Because he's a spirit. Well, what does that mean? Well, you know, the catechism says God is a spirit, infinite, eternal and changing as being attributes. The catechism actually has questions and answers that address some of these questions and gives us a real, firm foundation for the faith, and it comes straight from the Bible. Now, maybe the primary passage on this is Deuteronomy 6,. The shema Hero is real. The Lord, our God. The Lord is one.
Speaker 2:You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your might, and these words that I command you today shall be on your heart.
Speaker 2:And what should you do with them? Here we go, verse seven you shall teach them diligently to your children and shall talk of them when you sit in your house at meal times maybe breakfast, lunch, dinner and when you walk by the way today that might be in your commute to and from school or to and from worship or to and from the grocery store and when you lie down, I put my kids to bed at night and we read the Jesus storybook Bible and we sing a hymn and we pray together. And when you rise up in the morning, you can. So you're just immersing your kids in a world that is the world that truly is, which is a world where heaven and earth are interlocking and overlapping, where God is a very present help in times of trouble. That's the world that is, and we want our children in our secular age to be immersed in the world that actually is reality.
Speaker 1:I like how you stopped as the you shall right after lie down and when you rise, and you didn't get into the bind them on your hand or the. I remember we always talked in Hebrew class about that, verse eight, the. If you're looking at the ESV, it says they shall be frontlets between your eyes, but the Hebrew word is totafot. We have no idea what that means, because it's the only place it's used and so it's just kind of a yeah, I guess it's like literally like right in front of your face the whole time is probably the imagery of it. But what is this thing? Yes, not entirely sure.
Speaker 1:So we'll leave it to the listener to discern.
Speaker 2:That's right, and this is where we get the idea of the language of all of life that we use for this podcast or that we use for all. Of us need all of Jesus for all of life, or follow me as I follow Jesus in all of life. We get it from passages like Deuteronomy six. The entirety of your life is encompassed here, and so what is the idea of it being, you know, between your eyes or on your hand? It's like, well, your eyes is your worldview, right? Your eyes is how you orient yourself in this world. What is your hand? Well, the hand is the way that you influence and have a, have some sort of agency and influence on the world, and so your entire existence is to be immersed in and shaped and formed by the fact that you're loving God with your entire existence, and who God is and what he's done, and so that's what Catechesis really is primarily about.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and we're hoping that you know we rolled out the New City Catechism in corporate worship last year as our standard statement of or confession of faith. So now we're just we're basically just doing that again this year. We'll still sprinkle in the Apostles Creed and maybe some other things throughout the year, but we just thought we'd spend more time talking about the importance of these questions each week and so the other episode that dropped today we get into question one.
Speaker 1:Next week we'll get into. We'll get into question two as well. But we're really hoping it's a helpful tool for family discipleship.
Speaker 1:That's right but it really I mean, even if you don't I don't, I want to speak for people that maybe you're not married, maybe you're married, you don't have kids it doesn't mean this is not for you, because it really is answering very core questions about the faith. It can go as deep as you want it to go if you're using the web app, if you're using the actual app on your phone. We talked about this in the other episode that there's a short answer for what is our only hope in life and death. But then, if I wanted to, I've got the longer answers, what we actually confess in worship, and then, if I'm looking, I can look at different verses. I can read this commentary here that I've got some, got something from Calvin on this, from Tim Keller. It's basically got all your bases covered right there. That's right.
Speaker 2:Modern and ancient.
Speaker 1:Modern and ancient there you go, it's got a prayer and you know there's different books that you could get. So it really is a. You can use this for your own personal worship, your own personal theological development. It's not just hey, parents for kids use this. It is definitely that. But it's not only that that's right.
Speaker 2:Well, and Damian told me about this because he was reading a commentary on Deuteron omy and the author I think it was Michael Goheen said something to the effect of the two biggest threats to the people of Israel as they were going into the Promised Land were one idolatry everybody says yeah, totally get that but two failing to pass on the faith to the next generation. Now, on this side of Pentecost, the next generation is absolutely your children, but it's also new believers that there's generations of people that are coming to faith in Christ as young adults, adults, and so passing on the faith to the next generation is, it's all encompassing in that there's this handing down of the faith once for all, delivered to the saints, right. And so there's an article that we're going to put in the show notes here which is called Catechesis for a Secular Age, and it's got Tim Keller and James K A Smith talking about the importance of catechesis in our day and age, and they make an interesting point, which is, I think the idea is is that the catechisms that came out of the Reformation, if you read the Westminster catechisms, if you read the Heidelberg catechism, they take very seriously counter formation against the Roman Catholic Church? Why? Because in the 1500s and 1600s, the primary threat to the true faith, as the Reformers saw it, was the Roman Catholic Church and the ways in which the Roman Catholic Church had warped and distorted the doctrine of salvation and some of these really important key tenets of the Christian faith. That's not the primary threat that most of our people at New City are facing.
Speaker 2:The primary threat most of our people at New City are facing is secularism. It's that we live in a closed, material universe, that there's nothing outside. There's no such thing as transcendence really, and if there is, it's just a subjective experience that you can get through some hallucinogenics maybe. That there's nothing outside of this world. That positivism from science is the only way to get true knowledge. That I mean there's all these pieces of secularism and and we, it's the, it's the air we breathe, it's the, you know the fishbowl that we swim in. So I just assume that I am more secular than Christians prior to me.
Speaker 2:I assume that all of our listeners right now are more secular than they think that they are, and that's because we're formed constantly by a secular culture, a secular age. And so then, what does that mean? Well, we need catechesis. That's actually counterforming us against the secular age that we live in, just like the reformers created catechisms to counterform people against the Roman Catholic regime that they all lived under. And so why does that? Why is that important?
Speaker 2:Well, that's one of the reasons we're taking up the New City catechism is because it was written for our generation, and it's one of the reasons we're doing these podcast episodes is because we are going to talk about how does this question and answer counterform us for the common good?
Speaker 2:In other words, I think that if we, if we, if we become worldly, we have nothing to offer the world. That the, the Christian, the Christian gift to culture is, as we remain distinct as salt and light, as soon as we compromise ourselves and become unsalty, Jesus says you're no longer good for anything, which is hard words, but it comes from Jesus. We take him seriously. And then, if you become, if your light gets snuffed out, you're what? Are you to the darkness? You're nothing to the darkness, and so counter formation is really important. But it's for the end of being pursuing the common good that we want to love our neighbors well. The only way we love our neighbors well is if we stop becoming secular like our neighbors and we're counter formed by things like catechesis To believe the proper things about reality that the Bible teaches us and that we we trust. Come because Come to us through the prophets and the apostles and Jesus Christ himself.
Speaker 1:Yeah well, I mean everything you're saying here. It's just an extended riffing on Romans 12, 1 and 2. That's right this idea of you're not supposed to be conformed to this world, but, in order to for that to not happen, be transformed by the renewal of your mind or I think we've probably quoted the JB Phillips translation of it Don't let the world squeeze you into its mold. There, that's formation language.
Speaker 2:That's exactly right, yep, and and so what we're doing is we're taking up something that is, you know, arguably 5,000 plus years old baby, that's, you know, three to five thousand years old this practice of Catechesis as the way to form people in their faith, and we want to encourage and challenge and equip and release our Parents to do that with their children, disciple makers to do that with the people that they're saying follow me as I follow Jesus. For us to do that ourselves. There's few things like learning the catechism to actually shape your own thinking, even if you're learning it with and for somebody else. And so this is kind of a Sneaky way for us to disciple parents in the truth faith, as there, as we're encouraging them to disciple their kids in the truth Faith, yeah, and so there's something really important about that.
Speaker 1:Well, it reminds me of it. This this goes back, and I was probably let's see what is this? Stumbling a little bit on. What year is this? It's 2024, almost 20. Over 20 years ago, when I was taking piano lessons, that was something my piano teacher did with me. Mm-hmm, I've gotten to what should be an advanced stage, which is like, well, you really know, you've got the fundamentals down. If you can teach it to. Beginners which in my case meant five, six, seven year old kids. So good.
Speaker 1:So as a sixteen, seventeen year old myself, I started teaching piano lessons, but it was to make sure I had the fundamentals down really, really well. It's like yeah, I think I do, but it's it. I was reading in a I can't remember what book I was reading this in the other day. But when you ask someone to explain how I think it was about a bicycle, mm-hmm, it's like how does it? You know how a bicycle works? Yeah, you ask any adult and they'll say, yeah, he's like OK, well, tell me, uh-huh, how does that actually work? Yeah, or draw one. You are draw one and he's like oh, yeah, I could draw one. And he's like can you, uh-huh, do it? Yeah, and it's like with explaining a bicycle, it's like, yeah, we sort of intuitively understand it as adults, but if you can't actually explain it, then you really don't understand it, it's some practical know-how but you don't have theoretical or fundamental know-how, and I think sometimes we might think that about theology or about the Bible, it's like oh yeah, I know what the Bible's about.
Speaker 1:It's a general story. I understand trinity and incarnation and all these things. Like well, can you explain it to a five-year-old? Yeah, that's right. It's like well, it's a good test of how well can you articulate it yourself. It clarifies your own thinking, to be put in a position where you have to explain it to someone else.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's exactly right. So that's the why, that's the what. Now, the how. We're using the new city catechism. There's an app, there's a web app, there's resources available, but if you just use the app, I think it's a really well-designed app.
Speaker 2:You already talked about how you can look at the bottom. There's prayers, there's commentaries, there's scripture references, all those things. If you go to the top right corner, there's a little cog. There you can turn on children's mode, which shortens the answer for little little ones like my little boy who's four, and there's little songs you can play. There's all these ways to help make this useful in family discipleship and we really want to encourage our congregation to use that. That is why every Sunday, you're hearing from the new city catechism before we go to the Lord's Table is because we want to align our gathered worship in the congregational space with family discipleship, with what's happening in communities and circles, and we want to create this through line, where the new city catechism becomes a really significant part of how we disciple the next generation, whether that's children or new believers.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and that even underscores too. This is not a new thing we're introducing. We're not like oh, by the way, 2024, let's start doing catechesis. We've been doing different versions of it all along the way. Our liturgy is formed, is structured the way we're trying to do in communities and circles, in those spaces. It is this.
Speaker 1:This is just another way, another strategy is we can say that we're employing towards that same end and just trying to be a little more aligned with how everything is fitting together, which I will let the people decide- as the year goes on.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's well said. Well, I'm looking forward to the ways in which we get to unpack these question and answers through this podcast where we're going to talk about what does this mean theologically, what does this mean for us as a counterculture for the common good, and what does this mean for our personal formation and discipleship to Jesus? That'll be a really important way for us to work this out, this catechism for a secular age.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, and just to underscore too, I mentioned this on a different episode, not the one that we just released as well today, but we did set up an email that people can just so we can get more feedback about how we could tailor these towards the needs of the congregation.
Speaker 1:But if you have questions about the catechism that we feel like we didn't answer in this podcast, or you have questions about how to use the app, or even just insights of different ways we could approach answering some of these questions. Just send us an email at podcast, at newcityorlandocom, and that's gonna go straight to me, and then I'll be able to talk with Ben and figure out a strategy for answering some of those questions. Maybe we even do a Q&A where we just go through and, just if we get enough questions, do something like that.
Speaker 2:That'd be great. I'd love to do that, and I love the idea of the podcast email, because it enables us to turn this into more of a dialogue than just a monologue.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, I'm looking forward to what the rest of this year will hold and we'll see how it goes next week with question two. That's great, thank you.