“What is the chief end of man?”
“To glorify God and enjoy him forever.”
So began the Shorter Catechism, the blunt instrument through which I was inducted into the Presbyterian church as a teenager in early 1977. (Yes, apparently even in 1977 we were all ‘men’.)

We trust one God: the Love, Life and Truth who is the source and sustainer of all that was, is and will be.

Geoff Thompson, 2016 [1]

How does a confessional church induct people in faith?  Geoff Thompson’s excellent work in writing a contemporary statement of faith reminded me of the importance of faith education having a credal dimension. Writing an affirmation of belief in fresh language, Geoff says “my conviction grows that the ‘faith of the church’, including its trinitarian content and structure, remains a fruitful source of wisdom; it warrants critical re-articulation rather than dismissal on the grounds of either its allegedly primitive worldview or its alleged captivity to Greek metaphysics.”[2]

A faith-forming church is a teaching church: not rote doctrines on loop replay, but a thinking church, a seeking church, a transforming church.

In her brilliant book, “To Set One’s Heart,” Sara Little reminds us that to teach is to accept responsibility for helping others find meaning, to make sense of the world and to be changed as a result.[3] We are in the service of something greater than ourselves when we teach. Sarah sees faith-seeking-understanding as part of an educational quest for ultimate truth. This doesn’t sound particularly postmodern. Yet questions about truth and relativism, authority and freedom, certainty and doubt, are of necessity part of the seeking of wisdom, knowledge and truth. Continue Reading