For the ordinary church member, however, especially for those who are troubled about their faith and yet come to no conclusions about it, for the innumerable people on the fringes of the church who cannot find their way through all the conflicting opinions, the almost chaotic confusion in the realm of religion, it is of utmost importance that the substance of faith should be presented to them in a form that lifts out the central thing in a way that it cannot be brushed aside with peripheral ideas and arbitrary objections and assertions.
Herbert Girgensohn, Teaching Luther’s Catechism, John W. Doberstein, trans. (Philadelhia: Muhlenberg Press, 1959), p. 1.