New realities in pastoral care

My friend Zachariah once shocked me when he said that he wanted to be a catechist. Zach had completed his degree months back and embarked on a career in banking. I couldn’t figure out the idea of a banker teaching the faith to kids and new converts. Moreover, I had no picture in my head of a young catechist—with a university degree to boot.

Catechists, as I knew them, were venerable elderly men (always men) of limited education who conducted Sunday service when there was no priest and prepared kids for the sacraments by leading them in reciting rudiments of the faith, which they themselves did not appear to fully understand. Church authorities seemed quite fine with that arrangement. Zach’s suggestion would be seen as revolutionary.

But I let him explain it. He would take part-time catechetical training and thereafter offer his services at his parish during his free time. That would be his direct contribution to evangelisation.

My friend later dropped the idea. I haven’t asked him why, but it is not difficult to guess. Quite apart from the fact that the catechist seems to have been cast in stone (as a venerable elderly man with limited education), institutions here generally do not offer part-time catechetical formation, even in this age of distance and online education.

Yet the need for well-formed catechists is obvious. The pastoral care of millions of believers is largely in their hands. In vast and populous parishes where many people cannot cover the long distances to attend Mass every Sunday, it is the catechist who conducts worship in addition to preparing converts for the sacraments.

As the pastoral agent closest to the faithful, he offers spiritual help and generally leads the affairs of the local Christian community. Now such a preacher, teacher, counsellor and leader surely needs proper education.

The respected Kenyan professor of religion Jesse Mugambi, himself a former primary school teacher, once told us that to preach is to affirm to believers what they know already; but to teach is to tell people something new. It follows therefore that a good preacher must also be a good teacher.

I think it is that idea is which inspired Zach’s wish to become a catechist: to be able to share the faith in a passionate and knowledgeable way.

This is becoming increasingly critical in our rapidly changing societies. According to Kenya’s new constitution, we will have 47 self-governing counties which shall be the primary loci of development and political participation.

A consequence of this is that the best-educated people won’t have to move to Nairobi and the major towns looking for jobs and other opportunities. Many will live and work in the counties in the public and private sectors that are expected to expand fast.

That in turn will transform the rural areas, where at the moment the most educated person around could be the diploma-holding school teacher or nurse. The point I’m making is that the intellectual landscape of Kenya is about to change. With modern communications, ideas that were unknown in rural villages will find their way there. How is the venerable catechist going to engage the hearts and minds of his increasingly sophisticated faithful?

The second example of change is in higher education. Again until a few years ago, young people used to come to Nairobi and a few other towns for university education where the institutions were based. But we are now experiencing fast expansion of public and private universities to meet growing demand.

Within the past year, a university campus has been established in my small home town. Soon there will be more university campuses in our diocese than there are parishes. University students and scholars will be a part of local communities around Kenya. Liberal or radical ideas—some anti-Christian—will find their way into the pub and market, and from there to the village.

These are signs of our times. How is the Church prepared to cope? Will it still rely on the elderly catechist to preach and teach the faith and lead the local Christian community?

This year the regional grouping of bishops, the Association of Member Episcopal Conferences of Eastern Africa (AMECEA), is marking 50 years. I was going through a booklet about the anniversary when I came across a congratulatory message by the Missionaries of Africa (formerly White Fathers). It said in part:

“An important service AMECEA could offer concerns formation of pastoral workers which cannot always be done at diocesan or even national level…it might be helpful to organise short courses (few weeks) for different ministers at diocesan level who, in turn, could help form ministers for Small Christian Communities.”

And there will be Christians—like Zach a few years ago—who will be ready to take the courses and help spread the Gospel in their own rapidly changing communities.