Last year we had a demographic
blip and had no Confirmation Class. This year we have, at last count, five
students who will be part of this year’s group, and I couldn’t be more
delighted. I missed teaching the class last year and I look forward to working
with this year’s class.
I’ve been teaching Confirmation
classes for more than 25 years and I always look forward to the energy,
enthusiasm and especially the questions the young people bring to the class. I
have tried over the years to create a class that is focused on providing a safe
place for students to raise any and all questions they may have about their faith.
It is a new experience for the
students to be asked, “what do you think?” It usually takes a month or so for
the students to get comfortable with the structure of the class, and to trust
that my teaching partner, Mary Langley, and I really mean it when we ask, “what
do you think?”
The class is structured around
themes: God, The Bible, Jesus, Good & Evil, Right & Wrong, Christian
History, Worship, and other topics. We move quickly in the short time we have
in each class and we do a lot of myth-busting, distinguishing what we think we
know from what the Bible actually tells us. For example, we don’t want our
students to buy into the myth that the God of the Old Testament is an angry,
vengeful God. We show the students the many different verses in the Old
Testament where God speaks so tenderly and lovingly to his children. We want
the students to feel the embrace of a loving God.
Confirmation should be the
beginning of a life of learning, which means it should be the beginning of a
life of questions; questions that more often than not, won’t have answers to be
found somewhere on the Internet. Confirmation should be the beginning of a life
of walking purposefully in faith, understanding that even as our Lord calls us
to firm belief, doubt often is a part of faith.
Even for those of us whose own Confirmation
class experience was long ago, the words from scripture ring true, “I
believe; help my unbelief.” (Mark 9:24)
Grace
& peace,
Pastor
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