Revisiting Catechesis...

I've been involved in church Christian Education initiatives off and on for most of my 30 years in evangelical churches. Seems like the biggest hurdle was trying to figure out what to do with adult CE programs. There are so many options. We did classes on parenting, classes on books of the Bible (I taught Romans, Pastor Epistles on a couple of occasiosn for example). There was a class on the book of Acts I sat in on that lasted for years. One teacher in my youth did a great summer series on the Old Testament tabernacle and it's relation to New Testament events. I once led a class on affliction attended by mostly couples over 50, who found such a class more pertinent than the under 30 crowd might. There were classes on marriage, finances, prophecy, current events and more. Options, options, options. Not a cohesive game plan usually. Whatever seemed current and timely - whatever someone was willing to teach.

When we tried to come up with a game plan, for newcomers and new members things generally covered evangelical distinctives. So we dealt with things like inerrancy, salvation by grace through faith, eternal security, maybe a bit about congregational government, a word about tithing and about spiritual gifts. In recent years, the emphasis in many churches seems to be on getting newcomers "active" as soon as possible as opposed to "grounded". One suggestion was actually made in a leadership context that we should avoid "theology" because folks wouldn't come to something heavy.

In leadership meetings in past church affiliations, we tried to be more intentional about depth. We tried to devise a way of covering a few deeper theological concepts and grounding folks in a larger view of how scripture all "fits together". But it was overwhelming. Hard to limit, hard to pick and choose. I once came up with an elaborate three year plan, mapping out a bunch of "essential" ideas for biblical literacy.

But there is a simpler starting point....