Again this year, I am writing a liturgy for confirmation with confusion, questioning, and consternation. I love the kids who are being confirmed. I love the community and camaraderie they have developed in a year of meeting, retreating, questioning, wondering, discovering, and constructing. I love how they articulate their faith…not always complete, not always theologically “correct”, but genuinely, from a deep place in their hearts, a place where God lives and the Spirit moves.
And yet when I gather with other young clergy, the confirmation issue always seems to come up. It’s always been “done,” say our congregations, our head pastors, and our older colleagues. Most of us seem to feel like the way it’s done doesn’t really fit anymore. We don’t know what to do with it.
I have quibbles with this whole process. There are so many pitfalls: the mistaken (to my theological thinking) idea that these young people are “joining” the church. Weren’t they already here? Isn’t that an odd thing to say when we baptized them in infancy? The way it turns into religious graduation is equally dangerous/treacherous. Does that really encourage the idea of constant growth in the Christian faith? What about the emphasis on parents, rather than on the whole congregation? Doesn’t that let everyone off the hook in the church’s responsibility to take on the Christian nurture of all its members? What about the idea that only the clergy can run the confirmation program? Confirmation isn’t about joining the clergy. It’s about joining the church.
Maybe my own confirmation is too close for comfort. I think back to my own class, and I know that the faith we all confirmerd we had has been firmer and more solid for some than for others. Many of us disappeared after this church “graduation,” opted out, and never came back. Some hit roadblocks and bumps that derailed the journey. I know some of them will come back some day. I know that God’s grace is big enough for us all. But were we really ready?
One of my colleagues pointed out, after his church had a dinner with the governing body and that year’s crop of confirmands, that maybe two of the eight were truly “ready.” The rest could barely articulate the faith, couldn’t remember basic details of the life of Jesus, didn’t have a basic grasp of concepts like the Trinity.
This brings me to yet another quibble: can we really “teach” these things in a year? If so, is it reasonable to expect a fourteen year old to articulate a doctrine that took the church 300 years to develop? Then again, is this really about intellectual understanding? Because, even with an M.Div, I barely understand the economics of the Trinity.
Maybe it’s more about commitment. But, at 13, 14, or 15, are we ready to make this kind of commitment? We constantly use the language of journey with our confirmands. But even for me, a minister, a supposed church “success” story, many days this whole Christian journey feels less like a gentle, rolling road and more like stepping off a cliff.
So I look through past confirmation services and see the usual themes: journey; rite of passage; parental and congregational pride; conferring of responsibility. As I prepare the service, I am shuffling the regular themes, trying to tweak them, trying to change the language just enough to get past the traditions and into the heart of the matter.
I wish I could just dump the whole thing, all the traditions and rituals this congregation has built up around this day, crumple them up, and throw them out, start out new. I find I’m at odds with the theology behind this moment. It is not rite of passage. It is not a graduation. It is not a group of kids joining the church by their own spirit and will and tenacity. It is not so big and noisy and fabulous as we make it out to be.
I will buck up and pull this service together: it is a moment my congregation depends on, a moment my head pastor depends on. For one Sunday, we can put aside any niggling worry that we are not growing, not reaching out, not bringing new people into the fold. For one Sunday, we can celebrate the unabashed success of eighteen young people lined up in their Sunday best, ready and willing to become adult members of our church. For one Sunday, parents can put aside worries that their children will not grow up to be responsible, church-going, God-fearing adults. I will pull this service together, ultimately because this is not my church, this is God’s church, and this moment is a moment that God’s people say they want.
But among the cake and congratulations, I will wish I could just take the whole service back to the font, that all we would do is dip our hands in the water, remember how it was to be damp from baptism, to cry a little from the shock of it, and to hang on for dear life to the robe or the sleeve of someone who held us, someone who had been here before.
Because, in the end, isn’t this just another place where we pause, pray for a breath of the Spirit, and step off the cliff?
A-freakin’-MEN. I have so much difficulty with the whole confirmation process, and the service…oy. This year we focused on discipleship–not encompassed in a nine-month class, but as a year long journey. But we still ask them the questions, recite a creed for the only time of the year, and give out certificates and cake. oy.
I think I have a year off and plan to revamp the whole confirmation thing–possibly making it two years and moving the big “confirmation day” to rally day in the fall, to symbolize jumping into the various ministries rather than to symbolize graduation. We’ll see…
I had a year off from the confirmation process this year – and your closing comment is where we try to end up – trying to articulate that this is a REAFFIRMATION of the promises made by others for the confirmands at baptism – not joining the church, not graduation from church school, not an ending but another beginning – and a reaffirmation of the shock of it all. I love you wish – I’m going to save it and refer to it the next time I am involved with the confirmation process “I will wish I could just take the whole service back to the font, that all we would do is dip our hands in the water, remember how it was to be damp from baptism, to cry a little from the shock of it, and to hang on for dear life to the robe or the sleeve of someone who held us, someone who had been here before.” Amen.
Yes! The font is the perfect place to take confirmation. Having had similar struggles, I’ve wanted to see confirmation grow into an adult commitment; joining the church and committing to following Christ to the best of our ability because WE feel called to. Not as a way to keep teenagers in the Church. It doesn’t do that anyway.
Well,
I’m not yet in the parish, but I have this dream of having catechesis last three or four years, and each year have the students reaffirm their baptism, at the point that they are at in their lives. So that the ‘ritual’ or the ‘rite’ isn’t a one-time event that comes at the end of a class (i.e. a graduation) but is a recurring event in the faith life of a Christian.
One of our professors last summer had done his Masters or Doctorate on Confirmation – you might like to check out the website http://www.baptism4life.com (it includes a lot of reaffirmations for many passages people have. (Lutheran)
One of the ways that we have done confirmation previously that really helped build some personal relationships between teens and adults was a mentorship where most met weekly with their teens and then monthly we all met together for a year. (Methodist)
Oh sheesh, I feel like a loner. I LOVE Confirmation. Love, love, love it. We spend a year, a retreat at the beginning & a retreat at the end. We talk about it as “making firm” our response to God working in our lives. The youth lead the whole worship service on Confirmation Sunday, they join the church (the UMC liturgy in the hymnal), they write about why joining the church is important to then and share it with the congregation. A lot of it involves their own theology that faith is a journey and this is their first real independent step in that journey that is not ending with confirmation, but rather beginning. I’ve done three classes and have loved them all. I’ve found the youth to be thoughtful, excited, serious, and full of questions we explore together. I am always honored to be part of the process with them. This is not to say that there haven’t been “failures” of youth who have left right after confirmation but it’s a huge minority. The whole year (which does include non-clergy mentors for each of the youth) has been wonderful and I truly believe they took on a different role in the church after the class ended. I also think they took the faith and life challenge of it seriously. We had some amazing conversations together, especially on our spring retreat. But maybe my experience is just unique for some reason or other…
Thanks for this article. This Sunday will mark my first Sunday doing a confirmation service. I love the kids and what they’ve done in one year, but I have the same struggles. This is a very well-written piece.