Friends, once again I am yielding this article space to Heidi Indahl, who connects with The Mark 5:19 Project through her Designed for Discipleship consulting with parishes and dioceses. You can read her previous two articles here. As for the eye-catching title, I would only add: not just children, but adults too! This is a universal growth pattern of the spiritual life.–Susan Windley-Daoust
It’s long been known in education circles that we can’t teach kids who’s basic needs for food, rest and safety are not met. Yet despite 50 years of focused effort in early childhood education trying to address this at a national level, kids are showing up for kindergarten less than ready to learn. Pediatric mental health issues are rampant across the entire PK-12 grade span and beyond. Teachers spend as much (or more) time doing social work as they do teaching the core curriculum. Burn out was high before 2020 and it isn’t getting better.
Our faith formation teachers, students, classes and programs are facing the same crisis on the spiritual level.
Kids are not showing up ready to learn about the faith. While no one is researching these percentages (that I know of), I’d guess that if 50 years ago 1-2 out of 10 kids arrived not prepared for catechetical faith formation that today it is more like 1-2 out of 10 kids are prepared. The shift is that dramatic.
Why?
We are trying to teach spiritual calculus to kids who don’t know that two plus two equals four. To be entirely honest, most of them haven’t had breakfast (heard the gospel proclaimed) either. This is a huge problem, but it is also fixable. We know how to feed kids breakfast. We know how to teach two plus two equals four.
Kids need Jesus first- before they need catechesis.
As teachers of the faith we need to be spiritual social workers and address the missing basic need – the lack of Jesus in their lives.
We need to give kids opportunities to experience Jesus before we can teach them about him. The early days and years of teaching the faith need to look a lot like the toddler years. Kids see, hear, and experience their world through their senses. Then adults in their lives provide the language to describe what they experience. Kids learn what hot is because they touch something that is hot. They learn the word hot because someone else gives them the word. The word without the experience doesn’t mean much to a two year old!
Learning anything well at any age- including faith- requires both experience and language.
Once upon a time, the majority of kids experienced Jesus through the Mass and family life for six to seven years before they started faith formation classes. Then, through formal catechesis they learned the language and context to start to understand Him in new ways and build a deeper relationship with both Jesus and the church. This led to an integrated faith and prepared students for answering life long questions of mission, service, and vocation.
Far too many kids today do not know Jesus loves them because no one has taken the time to show them first and then talk to them about it.
This. Is. Tragic.
The catechism clearly identifies parents as the primary educators of the faith, but what I’ve discovered is that many parents aren’t ready to teach their kids and send them on a mission into the world. In most cases, it is not unwillingness. It is their own lack of experience and language. The way we organize our faith formation efforts can help rebuild missing foundations for our students. This will help the parents too, but that’s a topic for another article.
Where do we go from here?
Evangelical catechesis promotes an authentic experience of Christ’s sacrificial love supported by a rich language of faith. It is a relationship-first (experience), knowledge-second (language) way of spreading and teaching our faith. It is frankly what Jesus and the apostles did throughout the New Testament. We need both levels of encounter built in and we need to be willing to sacrifice or delay the language piece in order to ensure the experience.
When kids experience Jesus in a way that makes faith formation and church a thing they are excited about, parents are naturally going to be more excited about it too. Faith formation can move from one more thing on the family calendar to a welcome respite from the rest of their week. This is a respite families know they need, but many (most) don’t know how to find it until someone shows them. In case I need to be more explicit, that someone is us.
We need to radically shift the focus to move the program with our kids’ actual developmental level of faith instead of trying to make our kids fit the programs. We need to start with foundational encounters with Jesus particularly through Mass, stories, imaginative prayer, and the works of mercy. We need to emphasize relationship before memorization and facts.
If we put all of our eggs in one basket by waiting for parents to start showing up to Mass on our say-so or refuse to change our programs because they used to work just fine, we risk losing (yet another) generation of kids to the “nones.”
I firmly believe it does not have to be that way and that every parish can make the move towards evangelical catechesis. In each place that will look a little different, and that’s okay. Jesus encounters each of us as individuals in our strengths and our weaknesses. He is more than adequately prepared to do the same for each of our programs and to work through those programs to reach our students and families.
Considering a move towards evangelical catechesis? I would be honored to help your parish or diocese make a plan that is custom tailored for your community vision, resources and more! Please reach out to Heidi at co********@*****************ay.com
