Your faith formation books are driving people from the Church.

Your faith formation books are driving people from the Church.

I know, it is a hard thing to hear. We pour ourselves out into programs that end up leaving kids scrambling for answers, reciting thinly memorized (but not absorbed) responses, and with as much of a relationship with Jesus Christ at the end of the semester as at the start.

Anyone who has taught CCD/Faith Formation/ Religious Education knows that - after a long day of being at school or getting up super early on a weekend - kids do not have the mental resources to stay engaged to a lecture.

Reading from a dusty textbook, maybe reciting a few lines from the bible, and spending most of the class staring blankly at a chalkboard all do little to inspire love for learning, love for scripture, or love for God.

What does this result in? Kids who grow up thinking that faith is nothing but a burden, and who know nothing about the religion that they spent 12 years 'learning' about.

The attrition rate in the Catholic Church is way too high. We are bleeding members left and right, and these members so often say "well, I went to Catholic School/Faith Formation/ Sunday CCD, so I know all about X" only to then spout off the most unhinged and incorrect statement about the Catholic Faith you have ever heard (and it seems like the bar keeps rising).

Now, I am not going to go and say that CatholicBrain is going to overnight fix all the problems that have been plaguing the Church for the last 20(00) years.

What I will say is that the gamification of learning, the presentation of information through varied media, and the diversification of accommodation to differing learning styles will all go a long way to bridging the gap between where we are and where we want to be.

If you haven't heard of CatholicBrain before, I hope that you will sign up for a free trial on our site and give it a try.

If you have tried CatholicBrain in the past, what was your experience? We have expanded our offerings to include PreK-8th grade faith formation, religious education, and sacramental preparation curricula (all approved by the USCCB) - so there is a good chance that we have more now than what you experienced before.

And, if you have any questions, comments, concerns, love notes, hate mail, heresies, or clap-backs I will be happy to read them all in the comments.

May God bless you all.