Catechism

CATECHISM

As a child many of us learned a little rhyme in Sunday School with your hands: you wove your fingers together and tucked them inside your clasped hands, saying, Here is the church and here is the steeple, then rolled your hands in toward your body and opened them palms out with woven fingers facing up, saying, Open the doors and see all the people. At this point in the rhyme you wiggled all your fingers to suggest the idea of people in motion.

This tells something important about our church. It tells us that the church is people in motion; and that without people in motion, you may have a building, even a steeple, but you don’t exactly have a Church. Church isn’t finally so much a noun as it is a verb. It is a way of living and doing ministry. This moving truth is expressed most powerfully in Holy Communion when we all come forward to gather at the same table. Some of us skip our way there, others of us stumble forward, but the point is we go.

And our going bears witness to our need for Christian community. Our Eucharistic pilgrimage to and from, Sunday after Sunday is a sacramental sign of the Gospel in motion, proclaiming one person at a time, that everyone matters in the family , and that God’s provision is sufficient both in the church and outside it.

The great privilege of Christian Catechism is telling the story of God’s love for people. We promise in our Baptismal Covenant that we’ll continue in the apostle’s teaching and fellowship, in the breaking of the bread and in the prayers. We, in effect, promise to be a people in motion for the sake of the gospel.

We continue in the apostle’s teaching and fellowship through the ministry of Sunday school and the work of the Episcopal Youth Community. The children and youth of Nativity, thru catechism and ministry and good times, are nurtured in a Gospel of good news: a Gospel of hospitality, sympathy, and humor. They aren’t taught a catechism of separation, emphasizing the saved and unsaved, but rather a catechism of union with the whole family in the name of Christ. They’re taught to wonder and to question. They’re schooled in the beauty of creation and the love of God. And in turn, the children and youth of Nativity carry that same good news into our community ------- to teachers, to friends, to teammates, to families, to strangers.

This is necessary catechism. We’re not the only ones who do it, but to do it at all, in our own way, we need people in motion. This year our plan is to continue expanding the ministry of catechesis, of teaching, so that no one burns out. It is a shared responsibility.

To accomplish this, there are two things we need: First we need people to teach and people to participate. Come to Sunday school and bring your children. Encourage your youth to come to EYC. We can’t pass on the Living Word without someone there to hear it. Our teachers come prepared to share the Good News, and to do so, they need students there to receive it. And second, we need your faith and goodwill, your lived prayers, and your belief in the mission of this church at this time in our history.

In all things, we believe in Nativity’s mission of welcoming others and respecting the dignity of whoever comes and whoever doesn’t leaves. Believe in the beauty of our church as an outward and visible sign of God’s grace in our lives. Believe, too, in our communal and private struggles because ultimately they are the struggles of the human family, and we’re all wrestling our way into new life.

If you are interested in the ministry of catechesis, call me at 334-618-1344. Or sign up in the Narthex for one of the suggested ministries available on our ministry tree.