Foreword by The Rev. Robyn Szoke
Chapter 1: Baptism and Confirmation: Beginnings
Baptism is full initiation into the Body of Christ. Because many of us were baptized as infants, our parents or guardians made promises on our behalf. Now as maturing young people we can claim our faith as our own. Confirmation provides that opportunity. To claim our faith, we must actively seek to understand it. This book seeks to help youth explore their faith and membership in the Church.
Chapter 2: The Bible: Stories about Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow
The Bible is a family album of sorts —a collection of stories of God’s creative and redeeming actions through history. They are stories of the human family living in the grace of God. The New Testament is the story of God’s greatest redeeming act—coming into the world and dying on the cross. We are never finished reading the Bible. Each time we return to the album, we don’t just remember, we relive the events; we are changed by them. We learn more about ourselves and God.This chapter provides readers with an overview of the kinds of writing in the Bible and a simple framework for reading and understanding what it is saying to us today.
Chapter 3: Knowing Our History
As any one of us knows from family albums, our history shapes who we are. This chapter presents the history of the Christian Church beginning with gospel stories and continuing through Constantine, the Reformation, Henry VIII, Samuel Seabury, the establishment of the Episcopal Church, all the way up to The Rt. Rev. Barbara Harris and into today. The history of the Episcopal Church is a very American experience. By interspersing questions about today’s liturgy and practices, readers can see the impact of our history on the Episcopal Church and our beliefs today.
Chapter 4: Faith:What Do We Believe?
We experience God through tradition (worship, prayer, the Saints), the Bible, and culture (music, art, daily life), using our human capabilities of reason to understand our experiences. As a mystery, God is necessarily beyond words. Still, we seek to find words to describe our relationship with God. Words are our primary form of communicating with others. This chapter explores a number of Anglican beliefs, focusing specifically on the theology of the Apostles' Creed: God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. But belief in God demands a living response to our world~to keep God's commandments. The commandments are a guie to how to live our belief in community.
Chapter 5:Worship: Responding to God’s Blessings
Worship is our response to God's daily blessing of life. Worship can be individual as well as corporate and is entered into with our bodies as well as our hearts and minds. This chapter presents a variety of ways we worship, but focuses on Holy Eucharist in the Book of Common Prayer. The particular focus will be on the Eucharist. As a liturgy, the Eucharist does not just remember the Last Supper, but transforms us into new creations, drawing us ever closer to Jesus and God and the Kingdom of God.
Chapter 6: The Sacraments
Sacraments transform our lives—creating and recreating us as a community of God’s people. This chapter explains sacraments and how they are central to our understanding of Christianity as an incarnational faith. The two great sacraments of the Gospel are Baptism and the Holy Eucharist. Five other sacramental rites are confirmation, ordination, holy matrimony, reconciliation of a penitent, and unction. This chapter explores each sacrament.
Chapter 7: Spirituality: Created for Prayer
As created beings, yearning to know and be in relationship with our creator, the spiritual life, is natural. Deep within our hearts rests a yearning for God. So, how do we come to know God? The same as we do with others—through frequent conversation. Through prayer we reveal our deepest desires and listen to God’s desires for us. This chapter talks about the practice of prayer and other Christian disciplines of being in the presence of God. Prayer can be silent or loud, alone or in community; it can be an act of service or an act of celebration such as keeping the Sabbath.
Chapter 8: Navigating the Church: From Parish to Diocese to Nation
Humans are social beings and as communities grow, we organize ourselves with institutional hierarchy and governance. It’s a necessary part of being God’s hands in this world. We are asked to worship God and serve God’s creation in the world. Just as with any institution the Episcopal Church has its own style of leadership and governance. This chapter reviews that structure as well as its authority, which seeks to fufill its missionary work and maintain unity. The structure of the parish church, the diocese, the national church and the worldwide Anglican Communion is presented. Included in the discussion are the four orders of ministry and their functions. Through our baptism we are given the gifts of ministry. Ordained ministry supports the ministry of the laity.
Chapter 9:What Is God Calling You To Do?
This chapter challenges teens to consider their own ministries. Many people, not just youth, identify ministry with a collar. But most ministry is the work of the laypeople. The Catechism makes it quite clear that ministry is what we do. As representatives of Christ and his Church we are ministers wherever we are—home, school, work, and at play. A pretty awesome thought! But that’s how God made us. Each of us has been given special gifts and we are to use those gifts in our ministry. This chapter will discuss the variety of spiritual gifts, present a method for discerning those gifts, and talk about ways we use those gifts both in the life, worship, and governance of the Church and out in the world. This will continue to be an important task for young people as they discern their calling in life—where should I go to school? What job should I take? Whom should I marry? And so on.
Glossary and Index