Although it was a long process with many ups and downs, Marcus and Chandra Mininger had all three of their children recite the Shorter Catechism, start-to-finish, landing their names in the small “Congratulations” box on the Christian Education pages of this magazine. But it didn’t happen haphazardly. Neither Marcus nor Chandra, members of New Covenant Community in Joliet, Illinois, where Marcus is associate pastor and professor at Mid-America Reformed Seminary, could cookie-cutter from their own experience—as the third of five children, Marcus laughed, he only made it partway through the catechism. So they crafted their own system through the years.

The Shorter Catechism Inside One OP Home

Before their children could read, the Miningers would work on First Catechism questions during family worship. “They love it at that young age, it’s a fun challenge,” Marcus said. “It provides even young kids with a sense of dignity.” As parents, they worked to have a “positive tone and give lots of praise, lots of hugs and excitement, but also structure.”

Then, when their children were old enough to read the language of the Shorter Catechism, the Miningers typically left the First Catechism behind and began to incorporate the Shorter into the homeschool day. Catechism memory took about fifteen minutes: ten minutes for learning new questions and five for reviewing old ones. Periodically, “so that it’s not all isolated,” the kids would review with their parents after family worship—or in the car on the way to church.

Chandra used printed cards that had the question on the front and the answer on the back. (Great Commission Publications sells a pack at their website, gcp.org.) She gave her children three envelopes: one for questions “they knew cold,” one for questions that needed review, and one for questions they were actively working on.

For each child, the process took about two years. The Shorter Catechism, which has 107 questions, begins with considering God, Christ and the atonement, and the application of redemption. Then the catechism turns to the Christian’s duty as found in the Ten Commandments—questions 42–81.

That, Chandra said, is where each of her children struggled. The questions on the commandments don’t have any “clues” as to what the answer is, Marcus pointed out. Instead, they read mostly the same for each commandment. Their youngest, Chandra said, “got so bogged down and frustrated that I said, ‘let’s come back to this section.’” They finished the rest of the catechism first, then circled back.

Each child memorized differently. Their oldest is a kinesthetic learner, Chandra explained. She would encourage him to “literally walk in circles and say the answer over and over.” Their second is now a music major. “I would encourage her to get a rhythm to each phrase and say it the same exact way each time.” And their youngest is a visual learner—Chandra used hand motions and symbols to help her learn. Inevitably, some kids also need less oversight once you get them started, while others do best with more follow-up.

Tailoring the material to fit the needs of each child was already “the air we breathed” as homeschoolers, Chandra explained. But tailoring doesn’t mean changing the goal. “Some kids will be really verbal, some less so,” Marcus observed. “But to know the truths of God’s Word isn’t a personality trait. Memorization goes against the grain for some and with the grain for others, but we need to have a common denominator with regard to knowing core truths.”

The Shorter Catechism Inside Two OP Church Programs

Those core truths can be reinforced at church. Wendy and Bryce Morthland began working through the catechism during family devotions thanks to an initiative by a young couple in their church home of nine years, Covenant OPC in Tucson, Arizona. “They organized a catechism program for those that wanted to participate,” Bryce explained. Two Morthlands—Hazel and Dean—did. Every week, they would find the couple after church, hand over the card that showed which question they were working on, and recite it. If successful, that question was initialed by the couple. After a year or two, they had worked through the entire Shorter Catechism and had their names in New Horizons.

The program benefited more than the children. “It helped to get our family on a regular family worship time as well. We’d start by singing a hymn together, we’d do the catechism study, and then read some Scripture, and then pray together,” Bryce said. The study they worked through was Starr Meade’s Training Hearts, Teaching Minds. Designed for daily use, each reading includes the Shorter Catechism question, a short discussion, and Scripture passages. Bryce and Wendy enjoy it as much as the kids, they said. Although it’s been years since finishing the memorization process, “we still read a question every night to keep up with it,” Bryce explained.

Throughout, they also became more convinced of the value of what they were doing. “As we were going through it, it felt more and more like our duty as parents to make sure our children understood the faith,” Wendy said.

It’s a structure that was lacking in their upbringing, Bryce pointed out—both grew up in families of Christmas-and-Easter churchgoers.

Don Groot has a different story with the same ending. A member of Faith OPC in Elmer, New Jersey, Groot was an OP kid who found the “bones” of the theology of the catechism helpful in contrast to the more chaotic formulations of belief he heard his Christian school friends articulate. “I was so thankful to grow up in a church and home where things like the Shorter Catechism laid theology out so clearly and carefully.”

So when he started teaching Sunday school at Faith in the early 1990s, “it was a pretty easy decision to teach the catechism.”

Some of Groot’s Sunday school students are memorizing the catechism at home; others aren’t. Some churches may have students who will labor to understand the wording of the questions, let alone memorize them. Currently at Faith OPC, “most of the kids in the Sunday school are fairly knowledgeable and . . . don’t struggle too much with the language of the catechism,” Groot said.

Each week, to prepare for class, he begins by reading from G. I. Williamson’s study guide on the Shorter Catechism (P&R). From it, he formulates his own outline. Typically, in class, he’ll go over the question phrase-by-phrase and sometimes “translate” it into more accessible language. He and his students will then go through the relevant Bible verses together, work through a fill-in-the-blank and study questions, and end with application.

Groot goes through the whole Shorter Catechism for his high school class (“some seventh-graders slip in,” he admitted) every four years, interspersed with other material to give a breather or to deep-dive into a particular topic.

Inspired by the Shorty drawings in Williamson’s study guide— “everyone remembers Shorty!” Groot laughed—he draws his own cartoon characters for the class to illustrate a point. “Because those drawings are silly and bad, in some sense it helped them to remember the lesson,” he said.

When Groot asked his current class for feedback, the students told him that they appreciated how the Shorter Catechism helps them to understand what the Reformed faith is all about. “They hear [Reformed teaching] at home, they hear it in sermons, but the catechism questions help to reinforce.”

The Value of the Shorter Catechism

Groot’s students aren’t the only ones benefiting from the class. “I always tell the kids that I learn more than I’m teaching,” Groot said. “It’s humbling to go through the catechism because you understand who God is, how great he is, what he’s done for us. That’s always been the thing about the Reformed faith; it’s humbling when we recognize our standing with God as sinners and what he’s done for us.”

That recognition is what Groot doesn’t want Reformed churches to lose. It’s why he teaches the Shorter Catechism.

Nobody’s kids understand all the answers in the catechism, Marcus pointed out. But the practice of learning it teaches kids to be “faithful, regular, and committed.” Then, later, the phrases they’ve learned may bear fruit in an “aha” moment.

Just last week at supper, they were talking about the Lord’s guidance and what “Thy will be done” really means. So with some self-aware pomp, Marcus asked, “Which of my children can remember, ‘What is prayer?’” They all did: “Prayer is an offering up of our desires unto God, for things agreeable to his will, in the name of Christ, with confession of our sins, and thankful acknowledgment of his mercies”—and that answer led the rest of their conversation.

The author is managing editor of New Horizons. New Horizons, July 2023.