Some of you might recall that I shared a "rant" about confirmation last week. If you missed it, or want a reminder scroll down, or click here. I wanted to briefly follow-up with an idea I had about a new way of doing confirmation.
I would like to see a more organic process to doing confirmation. What I am envisioning is something closer to how we do marriages in the church. When a couple is ready to get married they contact the church, we ask them to fill out an assessment that guides pre-marital counseling and when that is done they get married. What if we did confirmation similarly? When a student feels like they might want to confirm their faith, affirm their baptism, they (or their family) contacts the church and we give them an assessment that would give us an idea where they are at spiritually. Using the results of the assessment the student will follow a series of discussions with an adult mentor. At the end of the mentoring process the student would sit down with the pastor (or other assigned congregation leader) to assess that the student really wanted to do this. In this sense a third grader or a tenth grader could enter the process and be confirmed. It could be as long or as short as needed for the student. It could be used with new member groups, or other places in the congregation as well if desired.
It would be a new way of thinking about confirmation, but I think it has some potential. What do you think of the idea? (assuming I explained it clear enough) Chew on it a while and share your thoughts. Next week I'll share with you what I see as the most glaring concerns about my idea. (Hey, no idea is perfect. There are always shortfalls in these kinds of things. If I had the perfect solution I would be rich and ready to retire about now.)
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