At our last council meeting, we briefly detoured into a discussion about confirmation. Several folks shared their memories of being confirmed.

Let me see if it sounds familiar to you: Confirmation classes began with two years of regular instruction with the pastor where long and boring lectures were combined with the requirement to memorize the entire Luther’s Small Catechism and a significant number of Bible verses. At the end of the two-year instructional period, the confirmation class was brought before the congregation to be grilled in pop-quiz style, only to be then confirmed if they passed the quiz. And finally after this point confirmands were allowed to commune and/or drink coffee and/or vote at congregational meetings. 

I have heard versions of this story from folks in every congregation I have served. Some have recalled their experience wistfully with nostalgia (and the observation that confirmation students today have it easy) while others have not been so positive about their experiences. 

To me, that version of confirmation classes and Confirmation Sunday sounds traumatic. No wonder the Baby Boomers (currently between ages of 57-75) were the first to leave the church in droves. I would honestly like to know what was being taught in seminary at that time and I would like to have conversations with professors and pastors of that era to hear them explain themselves. 

My own confirmation experience was much different. Our friendly and caring (though somewhat disorganized) pastor of that time had classes where we had the chance to have excellent conversations about faith. I remember reading our textbook, Free to Be, as a 12 year old. It was the first non-fiction non-school book I had read with interest. I wanted to understand God’s grace and how it had been freely given to me. 

We weren’t grilled in the front of the congregation; but I do think we played a fun quiz show style game against our parents. (I think we won!) And we shared faith statements at the potluck after worship on Confirmation Sunday.

In seminary, I had the chance to study and more fully understand just what Confirmation is as well as its historical roots, which may be surprising. 

Believe it or not, we will have had two Sundays of Confirmations and 3 confirmands over these past two Sundays. Last Sunday as two new members were baptized, they were also confirmed as a part of the baptismal rite. Isabella was already ‘confirmed’ as a part of her baptism.

Because technically, the act of confirmation is the laying on of hands and prayer (similar to ordination) that follows just after the dousing with water. In the Early Church, baptisms (and confirmations) were always done by a bishop. Then, as the Church grew, bishops began delegating baptisms to priests, though they retained presiding at confirmations. So baptisms would happen throughout the year, but confirmations would be saved up for the bishop’s visit once every few years. 

Fast forward a thousand years to Martin Luther and the reformers; pastors became the ones chiefly responsible for teaching and doctrine – sort of like mini-bishops in each congregation. So the baptismal and confirmation rites were re-combined.

Yet, we know that the technicality of the rite for laying on hands is only part of the picture. A big part of our hope for confirmands is not that they “graduate from church,” but that they enter more fully into the life of faith. Hence the other term we often use for confirmation: Affirmation of Baptism. As Lutherans we ardently assert that Baptism is an act of God – forgiveness, life and salvation freely given to the one baptized. And yet, we recognize that there is a place and time for us to acknowledge our awareness and gratitude of this gift given to us. We also combine this with a time of instruction and study, so as to come to a fuller understanding of the faith into which we have been baptized. This time of study is technically called catechesis. So two years of catechetical study, affirmation of baptism in front of the assembly of siblings in Christ and the laying of hands in prayer, all combine to make what we call ‘Confirmation.’

Our hope is that the young people who go through then process of confirmation will move from a Sunday School faith (“Jesus loves me, this I know”) to a more adult faith that deals with the questions of what it means to be in relationship with our siblings in Christ, what it means to live out our faith in the world, what it means to be loved, claimed and forgiven by God and how that changes us. 

In the end, it is my hope as a confirmation teacher that confirmation is not a traumatic hazing or an experience that causes confirmands to flee the church in droves, but a beginning of growth into a more mature practice of faith that lasts a lifetime.