(upbeat music) - Well, should we study catechisms or memorize scripture? It's a really good question that comes to us from a listener named Sarah in North Carolina. Pastor John, I'm a stay-at-home mom with three young children. We currently homeschool, and I love the opportunities the kids and I have multiple times a day to talk about the glory of God in our adventures and education.

It truly is a joy to point them to Christ every day. My question is this, what are your thoughts on teaching children a catechism? Is it worth the huge amount of time that we would spend on it, or would our time be better served only in memorizing scripture that points to the same truth?

Pastor John, what would you say to Sarah? - Well, it sounds like a wonderful home to grow up in. Talking about the glory of God and concerned about whether scripture, memory, or catechism is to be chosen. When we think about the time that we have with our children, and I'm talking about a family where a child's born, grows up, goes away to school.

There are other kinds of families, but let's just address this one. When we think about that time with our children, we need to be realistic and remember that Bible memory and catechism could start about age two, say, or three, until they leave at about 18. And so we've got roughly 15 years.

So when I pose myself the question, catechism versus Bible memory, I say, there's plenty of time here. We can do this. We can do both of these. This is not an either or. So my encouragement to all families is that they definitely read the Bible together every day. Real scripture, real reading, real discussion, real prayer from the heart, connected with real life every day.

Yes, Bible has priority. The question is, what's the role of a catechism in that process of Bible saturation? And I would describe the role of the catechism in four words, interpretation, selection, organization, and completeness. And here's what I mean briefly. A catechism is tremendously valuable by providing overall interpretation for the sweep of scripture.

We all need the particularities of texts. Yes, we do. I need concrete texts in my mind in order to fight the fight of faith. But we also need a sense of what those texts mean in the larger picture. And catechisms are one means that God, over the centuries, has brought about through the wisdom of the church, which he's given, to provide interpretation for how the texts fit together in a larger, coherent meaning.

Second, catechisms provide help in selecting what things in scripture to prioritize. There's thousands and thousands of verses in the Bible, like 31,000 plus. Most of us need some help in knowing which of these 31,000 verses are most important for knowing God and living a life of faithfulness. Catechisms are the distillation, the collective wisdom of the church as to what parts of the Bible need to be emphasized for the health of believers.

Third, it really helps the mind of a child, and adults, I would say, to have the vast array of ideas in the Bible brought into some sense of organization. What is foundational? What's built on the foundation? Where's it all going? Some kind of flow, some kind of order. Our children can be left in a great confusion if they only learn random Bible verses, 'cause that's 10,000 times better than not learning them.

But they can be left in some confusion if they just learn random Bible verses that are never brought into any particular order or sequence or progression of thought, and catechisms are a great help in this. And the last function, I would say, is the idea of comprehensiveness or completeness.

And here's what I have in mind. When Paul addressed the elders of Ephesus in Acts 20, he said their blood wasn't on his hands because he had not failed to deliver the whole counsel of God. He uses the phrase in Romans 6.17 that you have all received a type of teaching, or even clearer, in 1 Timothy 6, verse 20, he talks about the good deposit that Timothy should deliver to the people.

So you got these phrases, whole counsel of God, type of teaching, good deposit, all of them suggesting that in the bigness and detail of the Bible, there is a core, unified, comprehensive body of truth that we need to make sure, as a pastor we deliver to our churches, as parents we deliver to our children.

And I think catechisms are an effort, no doubt not perfect, an effort to try to fulfill that mission. So what I'm saying is don't neglect the Bible reading and don't neglect Bible memory, but somewhere along the way in those 15 years, build the catechism into your instruction. Maybe she's thinking, oh, you got to do catechism all of those 15 years.

Oh, no, no, no, no, that's not what I'm saying. Noel and I used a catechism for our kids some years and not other years, some school years. That's what we did mainly in the evening. We did it twice at least, a little simple one and then a more complicated one.

So I'm not saying it has to have a big part of every day, of every year of a child's life. Just somewhere along the way that gets built in. And I would just mention in closing a few catechisms to think about. The Westminster Shorter Catechism from the Reformed Presbyterian Tradition, the Baptist Catechism that I adapted, and that's at, I checked, it's at the Desiring God website, 118 questions that I adjusted and put my comments on.

So that's available for free. There's a little simple one, a child's catechism I think it's called or something like that. It's a little yellow book and it has like two or three word answers for little tiny kids, you know? Like who is God? Little tiny answers. And we used that very early for Talith and shifted over.

And then more recently there's the New City Catechism that's promoted at the Gospel Coalition website and it's got its own website. Just type in New City Catechism and you'll find it. It's got video helps and lots of things online. So that's a good one too. So my answer basically is not either or, both and.

- Excellent, great strategy, Pastor John, thank you. And I should note that the New City Catechism and this app, which is really excellent, it's both adaptable for little kids too. So the whole project, what they've done with the New City Catechism is pretty impressive for its flexibility to serve really any age demographic.

So grateful to TGC and for their work in it. And if you want links to those catechisms, you can find the transcript of this episode at our online home at DesiringGod.org/AskPastorJohn. There we host the full manuscripts of every episode of this podcast, along with links to resources that are mentioned in each episode.

You can find all those links in those manuscripts. Well, on Friday we're gonna talk about Bible translation and missions and literacy in the realm of frontier missions. I'm really looking forward to it. I'm your host, Tony Reinke. I'll see you on Friday. (upbeat music) (upbeat music)