Catechist's Journey

My lesson tonight includes the concept of God as king and of how we pray for the coming of the Kingdom. In American society, we sometimes have trouble teaching about the concept of the Kingdom of God – afterall, we won our independence from the “tyranny” of the King of England. Our present day understanding of [...]

Every once in a while, it pays to be patient with kids’ silly behavior because it can play right into your hands. Last night was one of those occasions. As I was teaching about the anointing with chrism at Confirmation, I focused for a while on the fact that the chrism has a fragrance (sometimes [...]

I began class last night by inviting the kids to join me in another room that I had set up with my “crystal ball!” I have a light fixture – a globe – that is tinted white and I placed a battery operated flickering candle inside of it and wrapped a purple cloth around the [...]

Tonight, as we begin our first of five Confirmation Intensives (class will be for 2 hours instead of 75 minutes, comprised of 5 different mini-sessions), I will be teaching about images of the Holy Spirit: water, anointing, fire, and a dove. To introduce this concept, I am bringing in a blank red octagon that I [...]

Tonight, we will complete our unit on Jesus. I have completed the Powerpoint that the young people began work on in class last week which covers the various aspects of Jesus’ life and ministry: the world of Jesus, the people of Jesus, the words and actions of Jesus, and the death and Resurrection of Jesus. I’m [...]

So things went fairly well last night with my experiment in having the kids make PowerPoint slides to describe who Jesus is. I say fairly well because I was surprised at how poorly some of them are at keyboarding and that slowed the whole process down (they know how to use Powerpoint, but they type [...]