Confirm07 is a series of weekend events for young confirmands of the UMC and their adult counselors and mentors, sponsored jointly by the Pfeiffer School of Religion and the Foundation For Christian Formation, led by a team of United Methodist resource persons, among them: Chris Hughes, DMin, Minister to the University, the Rev Kathleen Kilbourne, MA, Director of the Masters of Arts in Christian Education for Pfeiffer, Ed Kilbourne, MDiv, musician, storyteller and folk theologian, and Gloria Hughes, MCE, Christian Educator and Event Coordinator for the Confirm07 weekends.
In our experience, while 11 & 12 year olds may be prepared to begin the confirmation studies and activities offered to prepare them to respond to the invitation to Christian discipleship and church membership, they do not have the maturity to make the final commitments of confirmation until they are at least 13 (eighth grade). We feel strongly that the decision to be confirmed must be a free and informed response to an invitation. Often, church, parent and peer group agendas push children along and they are unclear as to what they are committing to and why. A forced response is meaningless to the church and to the confirmand and they are resistant or at least indifferent to participation in confirmation classes or events such as our Confirm07 Series.
Care should be taken to make sure that the youth that come on a confirmation retreat (or any retreat), have made the decision to participate on their own. A final note -- any over night retreat with early teens may be the first such trip they have made. Therefore commitment to structure and to the schedule is very important. Combine a lack of reflection and maturity, undeveloped social skills, with too little sleep and too much sugar, and you are in for a very long weekend. Experienced supervision should be in place and behavior covenants announced and agreed to before you leave home. Even then, ministry with youth is always an adventure.
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7 comments:
Just the facts. Just the facts.
I think we need to move toward a "readiness" model for deciding who should go through Confirmation. We have to break our unexamined attachment to the 6th grade as the automatic and dogmatic age for Confirmation. The theological and ecclesiological ramifications of asking young people to do what they are not capable of understanding or fulfilling is more important than the habit of 6th grade Confirmation. This is NOT a rite of passage from Children's Sunday School to Youth Group!
Who are the "we" that have to break the unexamined attachment?
Are they the same people that brought us the "sweet sixteen" birthday party phenom?
The "we" includes people like us who offer resources, retreats, and support of the general enterprise of Confirmation. It includes the congregations and families who insist on Confirming young people before they are ready: congitively ready, ready to take responsibility, ready to "get it."
And congregations that are not ready to effectively employ/deploy "full members" who are 11,12, 13 yeas old.
BTW: "It's my 16th birthday...where's my Escalade?!"
I think the major culprits driving the "tradition" are ministers. Confirmands are the only professions of faith in the UM Church growth demographic. You've got to harvest them as many as you can, as soon as you can, even if you pull up the plant before it puts down roots.
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