For the past thirty years at least, this church has offered to our older youth a chance to gather as a cohort and talk in serious ways about the faith they’ve been raised in since children. This confirmation class was usually confirmed in the spring and became ‘full-members’ of the church.
The Covid-19 pandemic put an early end to our last class. Since then, our cohort of 6 – 9th graders has shrunk and confirmation as we once did it, seems less fitting to our situation. In the spirit of turning a problem into an opportunity I am proposing a new way of ‘doing confirmation.’
Last month, after worship, and continuing on the second Sunday of each month until spring, I have invited our confirmation age (late middle school to early high-school age) to participate in a conversation I’m calling, “Christianity 101: Continuing the Conversation.”
Here’s the thing: I invite you too to be a part of the conversation! Our second meeting is this Sunday, following worship and a cup of coffee. We meet on the third floor.
I have always felt that the main point of confirmation was not indoctrination but in-conversation. To be in conversation about the great questions, to be in conversation about the reality of our deepest and most important longings and and how these things matter to our everyday lives with inquiring minds, has always been the most exciting and gratifying part of confirmation. But why limit it (and with our small cohort, that conversation would likely be limited)? Why not invite all of you to join us in the conversation, either sporadically or regularly? Why should we not all learn from each other? And experience the joy of faith-filled conversations?
I hope you will join us for this new adventure. My promise is that the conversation will wrap up by one hour (I hope that promise gets harder and harder to keep as our comfortability with the setting and each other in it increases!). And I promise to come ready to get the conversation rolling with a few introductory comments, questions, ideas. Those comments and questions might be related to issues previously raised, to themes related to the calendar, to the morning’s worship service, etc.
Bronson Alcott once wrote a book about teaching faith to children. In a different address, he talks about the joys of conversation as part of the deep, but simple need of human life: “Human life is a very simple matter. Breath, bread, health, a hearthstone, a fountain, fruits, a few garden seeds and room to plant them in, a wife and children, a friend or two of either sex, conversation, neighbours, and a task life-long given from within — these are contentment and a great estate. On these gifts follow all others, all graces dance attendance, all beauties, beatitudes, mortals can desire and know.”