If I had to do all over again. . .

The Lutheran hook into people today is mostly cerebral.  We are focused on knowledge and understanding.  So our catechetical goals having competing ends -- to get children early but to get them when they can understand.  It is the schizophrenic problem that has accompanied us for years.  In Luther's day the hook was put in our children early so that by age eight or so they had the catechism (the short one Luther wrote) mostly memorized along with the pivotal texts of the Commandents, Creed, and Our Father.  They began to receive communion and entered into the regular discipline of confession and forgiveness.  Then things went down hill.  In our attempt to resurrect some form of Confirmation (though not a sacramental one) we opened the door to the end result where first communion and confirmation were delayed and more and more expected of our kids (though not of adults).  If we have lost our youth it is not because we had them but because we never did.  They had a secular worldview already deeply implanted before they learned the Catechism and they had already appreciated that sports and entertainment were adequate substitutes for the Divine Service on the Lord's Day.  We did not fail to teach them enough but never hooked them into the life of the faithful.

Honestly, if I had to do all over again, I would have shopped the flea markets of used church goods and put a confessional booth back in our narthex or the side of the nave and begun to call people to take advantage of this gift and grace.  Look at how Rome suffered when they shoved confession to the side in the post-Vatican push to be relevant!  No, I would have restored the confessional and the expectation of private confession (not as law but as gift and grace) as part of our daily lives of faith.  When we ditched this practice, we lost something more than we bargained for.  Furthermore, I would ditch the Synodical version of the Catechism with all its additions to Luther (most of them positively overshadow Luther) and go with the shorter words of the Reformer and the expectation of memorization of his words along with the Commandments, Creed, and Our Father.  I would push this back to the age Luther knew (8 or so) and encourage the parents to do the heavy lifting when it came to the work of teaching their children.

My own confirmation instruction was woefully inadequate at imparting any real understanding of the Christian life or a Christian worldview.  What kept me in the faith was not what I learned Saturdays at Church (2 hours a week for a couple of years) but my parents work teaching and giving me an example of the faith.  When we shoved Catechism over to the professionals, we pastors screwed it up by trying to do too much and ending up doing not enough.  Why did my Roman Catholic friends end up with a Roman Catholic identity (even if they were not very faithful at Mass) and my Lutheran brothers and sisters ended up Baptists, Methodists, or nothing at all (in identity as well as affliation)?  Think about it.  Everything in Rome was oriented toward the life they would live in the faith -- confession, Mass, rosary, etc...  -- at least until Rome screwed it all up in a vain attempt to be contemporary and relevant.  We used to have some of the same kinds of things but we squandered it all on entertaining the youth instead of hooking them as youngsters in the faith and in the practice of that faith.  We fed their minds but starved their hearts.