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A Catechumenal Vision for Compact Congregations: How and Where to Celebrate the Rituals

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Many congregations with an adult catechumenate include rituals that mark the transitions from one stage of the catechumenate to the next. Our regular readers know that Kent and I are strong proponents of ritual for a variety of reasons. These are suggestions for how and where the traditional rituals might be celebrated throughout a catechumenal process conducted jointly by several congregations. Titles for rites and quotations are from Welcome to Christ: Lutheran Rites for the Catechumenate (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 1997).

Rite of Welcome of Inquirers to the Catechumenate

The opening rubric states “This welcome of those inquiring into the Christian faith and life may be used whenever there are people who desire to begin a more public relationship with a Christian congregation” (9). We suggest that this ritual could be included in a jointly sponsored Reformation service that involves all the congregations in the catechumenal process; this is a fitting date, since fall is also the preferred time to begin the process. The core ritual moment is “Signing with the Cross” on various parts of the body: forehead, ears, eyes, lips, heart, shoulders, hands, and feet. Each has a specific blessing spoken as the signing is done (11). Here are two examples.

Receive the cross on your ears,
that you may hear the gospel of Christ, the word of life.

Receive the cross on your heart,
that God may dwell there by faith.

The action of signing will make a deeper impression on the recipient than a plethora of words spoken without gesture and touch would.

Rite of Enrollment of Candidates for Baptism

This rite can also be adapted for a rite of remembrance and renewal for those already baptized but who are seeking to reconnect to the church or those preparing for confirmation in the Lutheran church. It marks the transition from an inquirer to one who is has heard God’s call to follow Christ in a life of discipleship; the weekly gatherings can take on a more intense time of instruction and faith formation. The recommended day for this ritual is the First Sunday of Lent (19). We recommend that this ritual take place in the congregation where the “inquirers” will become formal members. Thus, participating pastors will need to have individual conversations with participants to determine which congregation each will join. Such decisions might be easily made. For example, if a person has friends or relatives in a congregation; or in a rural area, the closest congregation to the person would be the logical choice; or if the person was drawn into the catechumenate because of a relationship with one of the pastors who provided pastoral care in a major crisis, this would be the obvious choice.

Vigil of Easter

If one participating congregation has a tradition of celebrating the Vigil of Easter, it would be appropriate to hold the service at that congregation and encourage members of all the participating congregations to attend as well. If no congregation has this tradition, we suggest starting a tradition of a joint Vigil of Easter. To encourage participation among the membership of the congregations, good musicians from the various congregations could be recruited to chant the opening Service of Light; strong lay readers could be recruited for the Service of Readings; all the pastors could participate in the Service of Holy Baptism (which would include the Rite of Confirmation, if appropriate). The rite in Welcome to Christ includes a thanksgiving for baptism (45) full of rich biblical imagery of water as source of death (the flood) and life (deliverance at the Red Sea), and language from Romans 6; the whole assembly participates in the renunciations and confession of faith. For those baptized and/or confirmed, this is also their first partaking of Holy Communion; what rich meaning would be conveyed as those participating for the first time would do so with people of faith from several congregations!

Affirmation of the Vocation of the Baptized in the World

This ritual marks the end of the post-baptism teaching, called mystagogy in the early church, because it included teachings about the “mysteries,” that is, the sacraments of baptism and Eucharist, which the neophytes had experienced for the first time at the Vigil. Ideally, this ritual would take place on or near the Feast of Pentecost, the end of the Easter Season. We suggest a potluck meal hosted by one participating congregation, at which the ritual could be done prior to the meal in the church sanctuary as part of brief service of preaching and prayer. The ritual also marks the end of the catechumenal process of weekly gatherings.

Has this series piqued your interest in exploring a joint catechumenal process? Do you still have questions about next steps to implement such a venture? We would love to hear from you! Scroll to the bottom of the web page for our contact information.

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Photo: Baptismal font, St. John’s Abbey, Collegeville, Minnesota
Photo by Rhoda Schuler

Immanuel Lutheran Church, Hinkley, IL

Compact Congregations: Challenges (Part 2)

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Last week Kent outlined some of the challenges that face “compact” (aka, small) congregations: lethargy that impedes change; the small number of adult catechumens; congregational isolation and American individualism; and conflict within a congregation.

Today’s post considers a compact congregation’s challenges with regard to the staffing, time, and energy required to introduce a robust catechumenal process in a congregation. Kent’s reminder to “begin with prayer” holds true for addressing the barriers within the congregation as well as the challenges of staffing and time for a small congregation. We encourage pastors to begin with their own daily prayer—that God would guide both pastors and congregations to new ways of thinking and open the hearts of members to respond to God’s call to spread the Good News in a hurting world. Consider also including such specific prayers for a missional habitus in the congregation whenever the church council and board meet; and finally, find ways to include Christ’s call in the Great Commission within the Sunday intercessions. It’s important that such prayers invite and encourage (rather than demand or shame) church members to be witnesses to Jesus in daily life.

Most small congregations have one full-time staff person (the pastor) and one or more part-time employees (secretary, custodian, church musician). I offer here one model for this common situation, based the case study of a smaller congregation in our book, Journey to Jesus (chapter 4, St. Mary’s), at which the pastor partnered with a volunteer lay person to initiate an adult catechumenate process. Begin by looking for a trusted key member (or couple) in your congregation with these skills and gifts:

  • Spiritual maturity (consider those who are regularly in church; who have an active prayer life; who live in service to others as a response to what Christ has done for them)
  • Good listening skills, both with an individual and in a group setting
  • A good facilitator in a small group setting—one who does not need to be the center of attention and who can gently draw the quieter group members into a discussion.
  • A person or couple well respected in the congregation

Provide training for this person or couple to serve as catechist(s) along side of you, the pastor, with you as the primary teacher of the content of the faith and the catechist as the primary mentor for participants to explore and deepen their personal faith lives in a group setting.

I recommend testing this model within your congregation; this “pilot project” has a dual role: to create “buy in” with the core membership of the congregation and to deepen the faith of participants. Start with an existing small group in the congregation or as a new approach to midweek Advent and Lenten gatherings. In the latter case, the evening could be structured in this manner:

  • Gathering for a light supper
  • Brief (10 to 15 minutes) teaching/preaching on a Gospel text by the pastor
  • Small group discussion on the text, led by lay catechist
  • Closing with Compline or one of the forms of Response Prayer in Lutheran Service Book

There are various options for small group Scripture study widely used in adult catechumenal faith formation, which we’ve discussed in earlier blog posts:

For the African method, click here and here.

For Luther’s four-strand garland method, click here and here.

For the visualization method, click here and here.

St. Stephen Cross

Where to Begin? Lessons from a Small Congregation

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St. Mary’s Lutheran Church*, one of the congregations where we did our research, imparts three lessons for beginning an effective adult faith formation process.

Lesson 1: Create buy-in among current active members

After attending a conference led by Paul E. Hoffman, author of Faith Forming Faith, Pastor M followed Paul’s advice and offered a summer Scripture study group to introduce the small group process to current members. This group met between four and six times throughout the summer, engaging in the kind of Scripture meditation Kent described in his post from September 7, using questions about a biblical text that “allow the Word to be proclaimed so that the individual and the community embrace this story as their own account (confession) of who they are.” Because St. Mary’s is a small congregation, the participation by members over the summer, which people reported was very positive experience, was enough to convince the congregation as whole to venture on this new path.

Lesson 2: Begin with a group of inactive members

St. Mary’s boldly started with two small groups that fall. The first was an existing group of retired women who welcomed a young woman (living with one of the retirees because of a temporary housing crisis) into their study group. The young woman and retirees bonded closely over their weekly meditations on and sharing about the story of Jesus. The group convinced Pastor M of the power of the process to form community, especially across generations.

The second small group included inactive or” estranged” members who were connected enough to the congregation to participate in this new venture. Pastor M described the impact on one woman in this group, who was “being folded back in the community” of faith and was now (three years later), active in the congregation and in the adult faith formation process.

Lesson 3: Embrace the practice of serving a meal before the Scripture study

Pastor M, a self-described “convert” to this practice, commented more than once about the power of sharing food together as a way to form community. The goal of an adult catechumenate is more than strengthening the individual’s relationship to Jesus Christ. Baptism, through which the Trinity claims individual persons to be sons and daughters of God, also brings God’s newborn children into the community of faith. It’s within the church that each person engages in the life-long process of dying to sin and rising to Christ, of turning away from self-centeredness to become Christ-like witnesses of God’s love in the world. A shared meal introduces individuals into the joy of communal life and the spiritual support, the bearing of one another’s burdens, that St. Paul exhorts us to in Galatians (5:2).

These three lessons share a common theme: that the adult catechumenate is “not an instructional process, but a process of faith formation,” according to Pastor M. Of course, imparting information is part of the package, but the primary task is forming disciples. This is a lifelong task that at St. Mary’s began by strengthening the faith of committed members; that in the next step drew an estranged member back into the active life of the community and who was transformed into a disciple committed to sharing the Good News with others; and that over the course of three years of an adult faith formation process, always included a shared meal to create and foster community among the neophytes and their sponsors.

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*A pseudonym

Photo (by Rhoda Schuler): St. Mary’s Lutheran Church during Lent