15.05.05 - Confirmation

Confirmation used to be thought of as the time when someone, usually a young person somewhere in their teens, accepted for themselves the whole package of the Christian faith. In Presbyterian tradition, what is commonly called ?´confirmation?? was more properly called ?´Profession of Faith and Admission to Church Membership.?? Those making their ?´profession of faith?? were doing precisely what the words imply ?± declaring that they believed the Christian faith. In some forms of the service, the candidates were asked specific questions about their belief in God as their heavenly Father, in Jesus Christ as their Saviour and Lord, and in the Holy Spirit as their helper and guide. The outcome of answering such questions was that the candidates were admitted to full, or communicant, membership in the church with all the adult rights and responsibilities that went along with that. That included the right to receive communion. The first time I received communion was when I was confirmed at 15 years old, and that would have been the case for most of the adults over say 50 here.

We in St Lukes, like many other churches, long ago dropped any notion that having been confirmed was necessary before receiving communion. Communion is the church??s community meal and is open to anyone of any age linked in any way to the community. One of the really lovely features of communion services here is seeing small children receiving communion alongside adults of their grandparents?? generation. It truly is a communal occasion. And for many years many of us have felt uncomfortable about requiring young people to say "yes" to statements about the Christian faith that we as adults had questions about. For a long time it has seemed inconsistent with the principles of a liberal or progressive church to expect young people, let alone adults, to imply unconditional acceptance of explicit faith statements.

Confirmation as it was traditionally understood fails to take into account the reality of human psycho-social and religious development. In the last twenty or thirty years we have learned a great deal about the ways in which faith develops in human beings. This led one American Christian educationalist (1) to suggest that instead of two rituals ?± baptism in infancy and confirmation in adolescence ?± there should be four. The first would be baptism in infancy, and the second would be a formal admission to receiving communion at around the ages seven or eight. The third recognised the unique stage of life called adolescence, where those in their teens increasingly challenge and push against much of what adult society appears to them to stand for, including religion. This is a time, he suggested, for a new ritual ?± one where the young committed themselves to challenging and questioning and exploring. And so he suggested devising a ritual to be held on the feast day of Saint Thomas, traditionally called ?´doubting Thomas??, for people in their teens, in which they commit to questioning. Then finally, some time in adulthood ?± in, say, the late 20s ?± he suggested a ritual similar to the way confirmation was been traditionally understood.

Well, unless the whole church went down that track ?± which is extremely unlikely given the conservative evangelical tendency to ask young people to make ?´decisions for Christ?? ?± we couldn??t arbitrarily adopt such a system. But, faced with wanting to offer something specific for older members of the youth group, we opted for something more akin to the questioning emphasis than to specific profession of faith.

What we recognise in particular ?± and those being confirmed might get sick of hearing me say this ?± is that for someone in their mid-teens, the next ten years are crucial years in their human development, shaping significantly who they will be as adults. While a fair amount of who someone will be as an adult has already been established in childhood and early adolescence, the ten years between, say, 16 and 26 are critical. These are the years where we gain increasing independence from our parents and become separate and distinct individuals. In these years, through higher education, through life experiences, and through relationships experienced, our adult self is significantly formed.

There are an increasing number of influences as a young person becomes more independent of family, on how they will see the world and themselves, and how they develop the values that will guide their adult lives. The age 16 ?± 26 period is frequently the period when among the relationships formed will be the one relationship which will become the primary relationship for the rest of their lives. If development is normal and healthy it will move from a relatively black and white view of everything to a more multi-coloured perspective.

I believe that for a church to ask anyone at the beginning of such a major period of life-development to commit life-long to anything, including Christian faith, is by and large irresponsible. Such a requirement would either limit the amount of personal growth and development possible ?± and we see such stunted development clearly displayed in the legalistic and simplistic attitudes of young adults (and not-so-young) in the many conservative, evangelical and charismatic churches and fellowships of today. Or, such a requirement may later produce unnecessary guilt and sense of betrayal as the individual finds her or himself doing or thinking things believed to be contrary to what they professed in their mid-teens.

To be fair, of course, and this is not intended to sound condescending, it is possible for people in their mid to late teens to become involved in the warmth of fellowship in a ?´black and white?? thinking group such as Youth for Christ, to make a ?´decision for Jesus?? in whatever form that takes, and in adulthood to naturally grow out of it into a more mature faith. We have examples of that process and experience sitting in our pews at St Lukes.

The confirmation process as we developed it this year in St Lukes recognises and affirms the significant period of change and development that our older youth are entering, and offers them not definitive answers but a set of tools to assist them on their life journey. It is a bit like giving someone embarking on their big OE the relevant guide books, maps, list of addresses of helpful people overseas, and so on. In what has gone on in youth group teaching over recent years, and specifically in what was offered in the confirmation programme that we devised ourselves, we have offered ways of looking at God, through ways of seeing Jesus, along with some foundations for a Christian spirituality, for belonging in community, and for a set of values with which to assess the bombardment of stimuli that will come their way in the next ten years and more.

You will see this reflected in the statement the confirmation candidates have prepared ?± in place of answering prescribed questions. They wrote this statement themselves with help from youth leaders Em, Andrew and Sophie. My sole input was to suggest one word, although you may recognise some sets of words in the statement as similar to things I have said at various times. In essence, it seems to me, this is a statement of attitudes and of commitment to an ongoing process, rather than a specific profession of specific faith. It expresses a set of reference points for the journey ahead.

To make an analogy, the ideas behind the statement are like the sails and steering apparatus for the yacht of each of their lives ?± wherever the journey takes them, essential equipment for making the journey has been provided. Or another analogy, the statement is the default setting on their computer of life. Through the world wide web, the computer opens up an endless variety of influences and stimuli, not all of them good, but the default setting remains as the foundation, the launching pad (to mix metaphors) for exploration.

In time, of course, the default setting can be changed. Where normal psycho-social and faith development occurs, it is inevitable and right that the default setting be changed. If the group being confirmed today were to come together in five or ten years from now and try and create a statement, different words would probably ?± hopefully ?± be used. But for now, these words are the starting point of a journey of faith.

And, as you will see in the service, they are words which invite a response from us, the Community of Saint Luke. In confirmation we confirm our commitment to our young to be for them a home, to be their true north, to be a soft place for them to fall, to be community which will always encourage and inspire, provoke and nurture; a community which will never judge and always commend, which can laugh and can weep when appropriate, a place where God is found in the midst of community wherever life??s journey takes any of our members.