As many head back to school and religious education, we welcome back friend of the show Joe Paprocki to help catechists teach God’s word in the modern world. Joe serves as National Consultant for Faith Formation at Loyola Press and is the author of the newly updated book, “The Catechist’s Toolbox 2.0: Building Today’s Missionary Disciples.”
Father Dave first shares a listener question that asks how a new catechist should approach religious education with adults. Joe responds, “First of all, congratulations on working with adults. We sometimes forget that adult catechesis is supposed to be the primary form of catechesis, and this person is really getting out there and doing that.” He adds, “I think the important thing is to first of all, gather those folks and start to pick their brains about what they are interested in and what issues they are dealing with. I don’t think it’s good to just pop open the Catechism and say, ‘Okay, let’s talk about creed.’”
“We have to gather people together and connect our teachings with what’s going on in their daily lives,” Joe continues. “One of the principles of adult faith formation is we have to include them in making decisions for themselves. They’re not children, so let’s not infantilize them.”
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Joe’s audience is for Catholic educators of adults or children, and he notes that this is the first update of his book “The Catechist’s Toolbox” since 2007. “The biggest thing that happened in 2007 was the invention of the smartphone. This has changed everything. It has rewired our brains; we think differently, we express ourselves differently, and we interact differently,” he says. “So I deal with that a lot in [The Catechist’s Toolbox 2.0] to help catechists recognize that we can’t just say, ‘Okay, today I’m teaching chapter three. Open up the book to chapter three, and we’re going to read for 45 minutes.’ That hasn’t been working for decades, but especially not now.”
Joe offers one strategy to incorporate the changes of our modern world rather than fight them. “Twenty-first century learners are used to changing frequently, switching tasks frequently. If you don’t like something on your phone, you swipe it and you go on to something else. So in our catechesis, we have to take advantage of that lack of attention and to arrange our lessons into chunks,” he explains. “If you’re teaching 45 minutes, it means dividing my 45 minutes into six or seven chunks each for about five to seven minutes.”
He illustrates how those chunks may tangibly look. “We’re going to have an opening prayer for maybe three to five minutes, then we’re going to have an ice breaker for maybe five minutes. Then we’re going to delve into our textbook questions and read for seven to eight minutes. Then we’re going to watch a short video for three to five minutes. Then we’re going to do an activity to allow the young people to express what they’ve learned,” Joe explains. “So you see that idea of taking advantage of the fact that they have shorter attention spans.”
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Joe stresses the importance of bringing religious education into the modern era. “Our directory for catechesis warns us that if we don’t incorporate technology into our faith formation, we run the risk of communicating that we are irrelevant. I think it’s a powerful phrase,” he says. “That doesn’t mean that we have to digitize everything. In fact, quite the opposite. We need to also help young people have quiet time, silence that is quality, so they can get in touch with God’s whispering.”
However, he says, “If we do religious education without playing some music through a little Bluetooth speaker, or without showing a film using QR codes — just very basic things — they’ll write us off, because the medium is the message. If they don’t see their medium, which is technology, the message is irrelevant.”
