Grounded in the Gospel: Building Believers the Old Fashioned Way

Catechism had always been a foreign concept to me. Growing up I had Roman Catholic friends who went through “confirmation” but whose lives showed little or no fruit of spiritual life. Indeed, I only heard complaints from these friends about their dreadfully boring catechism classes. Catechesis was simply not a category in my evangelical upbringing nor was it something I ever felt was a necessity. However, with the passage of time and the knowledge that nothing should be judged by its worst expressions I have come to long for that which my church never offered.

This is why I am thankful for J.I. Packer and Gary Parrett’s new book Grounded in the Gospel: Building Believers the Old Fashioned Way. Packer of course is the dean of contemporary evangelical theology and has authored and edited more than 50 books. Parrett is professor of educational ministry and worship at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary.

In the 1990’s, my first years in vocational ministry, a book explaining the value of and offering strategies for implementing catechesis would have been ignored or even mocked as hopelessly irrelevant. Thankfully, things have changed. Even George Barna, one of the men most responsible for the popularization of pragmatism in the church, is lamenting the lack of biblical literacy and worldview among so-called evangelicals. So it seems that the soil is prepared for such a book as Grounded in the Gospel. Continue Reading>>>