A Catechism for Christian Growth is specifically designed to fit into a variety of settings in the Christian life. It helps parents shepherd their children, new converts understand the fundamentals of the faith, and entire congregations learn sound doctrine like catechisms have for centuries. It is a succinct yet systematic scaffolding upon which Christians can fortify their faith and defend against all sorts of heresy. But defense is hardly the only benefit of catechesis, for it will also engender a deep and abiding reverence for the Creator (Prov. 4:20–27) and a warmth of affection for God as Christians rest in his electing love (Deut. 6:5–9). 

There’s an enduring misconception about the essential tool of the Reformation. While it is widely assumed that “the Protestant reformers placed the Bible in the hands of laypeople, it is more accurate to say they were handed catechisms to learn as apt summaries of divine revelation.”[1] The practice of using catechisms to help train children, adults, and even ministers placed the focus of the church back on a biblical trajectory––to affirm and live out sound doctrine. Sadly, Protestants, and especially Baptists, moved away from catechisms around the end of the nineteenth century for a variety of reasons,[2] but thankfully, there seems to be a growing interest in catechisms today. This is encouraging, for every pastor––better yet, every father––should consider a good catechism to help shepherd his flock. In this article, I begin with the need of every Christian to affirm sound doctrine, then show how catechisms can meet that need, and conclude by explaining why I ventured to write an updated catechism for the church today.
We Need to Affirm Sound Doctrine
Everyone has a theology. Everyone has a worldview. But Christianity is designed to be a worldview based on sound doctrine. Without sound doctrine derived from the Word of God, there are no guard rails for morality, there are no lanes to stay in while reading and interpreting the Bible, and there is no accurate framework to buttress our life. For generations, sound doctrine has been minimized, so much so that evangelicals are as apt as liberal Christians to say, “Christianity is all about a relationship not a religion,” or “Doctrine divides,” or “We want good deeds, not good creeds.”[3] When the church minimizes the importance of sound doctrine, there no longer remains an impetus to catechize. That which used to be very Protestant now seems foreign. The remedy? Rediscover that every Christian needs to affirm, cherish, and defend sound doctrine.
In Titus 1, God tells us that elders are to be able to give instruction in sound doctrine and also to rebuke those who contradict it (Titus 1:9). In 1 and 2 Timothy, Paul repeatedly made the connection from his faithful life to his sound doctrine (1 Tim. 6:3–5; 2 Tim. 1:13). The reason for God’s emphasis on sound doctrine? Sound doctrine nourishes the soul and promotes godly living. Therefore, the pursuit, knowledge, and protection of sound doctrine is essential to how God calls every Christian to live the Christian life. Perhaps we should counter modern evangelical clichés with, “Good creeds lead to good deeds.” The backbone for why the Scriptures support the use of a well-crafted catechism is simply that catechisms are excellent tools to communicate, learn, and study sound doctrine.
We Need Tools to Teach Sound Doctrine
I am not a handyman, nor the son of a handyman, and so it shouldn’t surprise that I often come at routine home projects with the wrong tools in hand. Like the time I tried to use a hammer drill to screw a broken chair-arm back together: it now sits with its arm split, hanging limply in my dining room, a constant reminder of my handyman inadequacies. For generations now, pastors have attempted to motivate fresh vigor for godly living with the power of positive thinking, emotional pleas to remember God’s love, calls to rededicate your life, or heaping guilt on their hearers over the urgent plights of a sin-cursed world. As many of these tools have failed, many are beginning to remember that catechisms were the tool churches used for centuries to equip the saints to know and to live out sound doctrine. After all, the goal of our churches isn’t to simply count decisions, but to make lifelong disciples of Jesus Christ. Catechisms, used well, help Christians ruminate on sound doctrine. They allow this truth to seep in, rather than bounce off. So, a good catechism can become a pastor’s best friend.
In our home, starting when my children were toddlers, we taught them simple questions and answers. Some of those questions and answers were indispensable to the discipline process: Did you disobey daddy? Yes. What does God call that? Sin. What does God tell daddy he has to do? Discipline me. Others included echoes from church history: Who made you? God made me. What is our only hope in life and death?
Read More
Related Posts:

Written by Jared C. Wilson |
Wednesday, March 1, 2023
In many ways, Haynes could be considered a kind of American Spurgeon—a faithful preacher and pastor, beloved for decades by his church and his family, and concerned to see the implications of the gospel fleshed out in homes and in society.

An Unquestionable Legacy
Lemuel Haynes is perhaps the single most important American figure most Christians have never heard of. Born July 18th in 1753 to a Black man and a White woman, Haynes was abandoned by his parents in the home of a family friend who sold the infant Haynes into indentured servitude. By the providential hand of God, however, young Lemuel was placed into a Christian home, where by all accounts, including his own, he was treated as a member of the family and raised to love the things of God.1
Growing up in colonial Vermont, Haynes worked hard and studied hard, proving himself quite adept at intellectual pursuits despite being largely self-taught. He has affectionately been called a “disciple of the chimney-corner” as that is where he would spend most evenings after work reading and memorizing while other children were out playing or engaging in other diversions.
Haynes’s commitment to theology began in that chimney-corner, and eventually he was born again. Not long after his conversion, he turned his followership of Christ and his intellectual bent into a serious endeavor by writing and preaching. An oft-told anecdote about Haynes concerns a scene of family devotions at the Rose household where he was indentured. Given his adeptness at reading and his deep concern for spiritual matters, the Rose family would often ask Haynes to read a portion of Scripture or a published sermon. One night, Haynes read a homily of his own without credit (apparently the sermon on John 3:3 included in this volume). At the end, members of the family remarked at its quality and wondered, “Was that a Whitefield?” “No,” Haynes is said to have replied, “it was a Haynes.”
The few sermons we have of Lemuel Haynes prove him to be an exceptional expositor in the Puritan tradition, similar to Edwards or Whitefield though simpler than the former and more substantive than the latter. And yet, what Haynes may have lacked in eloquence compared to his contemporaries, he more than made up for in biblicism and applicational insight.
Officially licensed to preach in 1780 by the Congregational Association, Haynes soon after preached his first public sermon (on Psalm 96). He was then ordained in 1785 and would go on to receive an honorary Master of Arts degree from Middlebury College.

Related Posts:

True wholeness, healing, and redemption from eating disorders and body dysmorphia are not found anywhere outside Christ…we were created to find our satisfaction in One who is far more glorious, beautiful, and perfect. So, look up from the mirror, or whatever pit you may find yourself in, and look to Christ. 
I once lived in the mirror. No, there wasn’t a bedroom hidden in my bathroom mirror. But the mirror was where I found my worth, purpose, and identity. My body was the temple where I went to worship. Each and every day, my thoughts were consumed with calculating calories; my emotions were filled with anxiety over how much food I was going to eat; my plans revolved around getting in my precisely measured out meals and workouts; indeed, my entire life was wrapped up in what my body looked like on the outside.
I had constructed an image to worship, and that image was my body. I would check every mirror I walked by to make sure I hadn’t gained any fat in the last few hours. Every morning I would step up to the judgment seat of the scale to see if I would be found guilty or innocent that day. And when the scale did not move in the right direction, or when I saw or felt any hint of fat on my sides, I pronounced myself guilty.
And in order to worship my body image, I enslaved myself to the “food laws” police, and I was the chief officer. As chief officer, I made the laws, I gave out the rewards for obedience to the laws, and I laid down the penalty for breaking the laws. When I kept my food laws, I told myself, “Well done, good and faithful servant,” and received the reward of feeling safe, secure, and in control. But when my food laws were threatened by friends or family wanting to go out to eat, my world would come crashing down. When I inevitably broke one of my laws by either eating too much or too little, too early or too late, all of the feelings of shame, anxiety, and guilt would come flooding back in. No grace, no forgiveness, no mercy was to be found. I was enslaved to the master of my body. I was enslaved to the master of food. I was imprisoned in the pit of food and body idolatry, with no way out. I was sick, and needed healing. I was hungry, and needed to be filled.
But God redeemed my life from the pit, and crowned me with steadfast love and mercy (Psalm 103:4). And what did that redemption from the pit look like?
God showed me what my eating disorder and body dysmorphia truly was: sin committed against a holy God. By making myself the lawgiver and judge, I had attempted to stand in the place of the True Lawgiver and Judge of my life. By living in obedience to my food laws, I cultivated my own self-righteousness. I was therefore willfully rejecting the only righteousness that could justify me before the True Lawgiver and Judge: the righteousness of Jesus Christ. I had exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature (my body, food laws) rather than the Creator (Romans 1:25). I was guilty, but not for breaking my food laws. I was guilty because I had committed cosmic treason against my Creator, and I needed rescue.
Read More