While preparing for the second course in the Lutheran Confessions, the first-year students of LTS began to memorize Luther’s Small Cateshism in advance. Learning the Cateshism has been the basis of Lutheran educational catechetical practice since the sixteenth century, although instruction in the church as such was obviously not invented by Lutherans. Unfortunately, not all Lutheran churches now include memorizing the Catechism in their instruction. It is not learned in every family, nor is it studied in every church.

Some serious steps have been taken lately in the Siberian Evangelical Lutheran Church to have children memorize the Small Catechism. This is the combined effort of the families and the parochial Sunday school. It is symbolic that the first publication of SELC was that of the Small Catechism.

The course taught by Fr. Brent Kuhlman began on April 4. It was dedicated to the second half of the Book of Concord. It is the third time Fr. Kuhlman has come to the Seminary in Novosibirsk. This particular course will be structured around the Small Catechism. As a rule, seminarians memorize the Small Catechism during this course, if they, for some reason, did not do it before.

Since it might be difficult to memorize a lot of material in the short time of an intensive, seminarians have already begun this memorization work. For the future priests to be able to teach Catechesis in the parish to both children and adults, they must know it very well themselves.