It is a moving experience for a church and especially for parents to witness children make public profession of their faith.  This is one of our goals at WRC, to see every one of our children confess the gospel of Christ with their own mouths and thereafter begin receiving the Lord’s Supper as a “professing” Christian.  God’s covenant promises are outwardly signified and sealed to them in their baptism, but they must grow to embrace those promises for themselves, just like those children in God’s Abrahamic and Mosaic covenant communities were required to confess the faith with their own lips.

Often, our children grow in faith gradually, as they observe their parents, participate in worship, and develop the natural faculties for a mature faith.  A helpful ingredient in their covenant nurture is catechesis, which simply means “instruction,” in the contents of the faith.  This is a hallmark of the Reformed tradition, and it occurs in our church through the use of the Heidelberg Catechism, named after the city that produced it in the 16th century – Heidelberg, Germany (pictured above).  What follows is an overview of this practice, which has, to our detriment, fallen on hard times in recent years.  If you already feel intimidated or leery, please, read on.  We proceed at a pace that’s appropriate for each child, and we ensure that the children never put their faith in the Catechism but in the Bible.