The Journey to Confirmation Sunday

The Journey to Confirmation Sunday

On February 4, FUMC recognized the Confirmation Class of 2024, celebrating six young students and their continued faith journey. Confirmation is a time set aside to teach and nurture young people in the basics of the Christian faith and understanding of that faith as United Methodists. Our dedicated team of parents, church members, and staff work for five months preparing young people to be able to decide for themselves if they are ready to make a personal commitment to God, Christ, and the Holy Spirit, as well as to the church. This year’s confirmands are William Clark, Olivia Elliott-Abshire, Cash Miller, Carson Minniear, Phoebe Taylor, and Conner Prickett.

Big Ideas

For five months, confirmands meet for Confirmation Class during the Sunday School hour. FUMC’s curriculum for Confirmation is based on scripture with an emphasis on Wesleyan principles. Each week addresses a different topic that reveals how scripture informs our theology as United Methodists. In fun and age-appropriate ways, students begin answering the questions:

Who is my God? What is the content of my faith? and What is the purpose of my church?

Kim English, our Children’s Director, loves teaching Confirmation for this reason. “I love talking about big theological ideas with middle schoolers. They are just at the age where they are ready to dig deeper into their faith and ask important questions. It is so satisfying to watch these students mature in their faith in such monumental ways over a few short months. It’s an honor to be a part of that journey.”

John Wesley and Methodism

All of this year’s confirmands agreed that their favorite lessons were of John Wesley and the Founding of Methodism. Kim elaborates, “Who John Wesley was and his beliefs are threaded throughout our time together in Confirmation. Each week, we close with the saying attributed to John Wesley that begins: ‘Do all the good you can.’ John Wesley’s ideas about grace and salvation are repeated over and over again. By the time they are confirmed, they not only know what it means to be a Christian, they know what it means to be a Methodist.”

The students also learn about the history of the Christian Church, beginning with the church in Acts, talking about the journey that The Church took through the Roman Catholic Church to the Church of England and John Wesley’s Methodist movement. They continue this lesson by talking about the history of our very own congregation.

More Lessons

This year’s students particularly enjoyed learning about the timeline of when the Bible was written. Kim was impressed that this bonus lesson stood out to the students. As she describes it, “When we are little, Sunday School is all about learning Bible stories and characters and learning lessons from them about who God is and who God wants us to be. But, as we grow into mature Christians, it is vital that we have a deeper understanding of what the Bible is as a whole, where it came from, and who wrote it.”

“We teach a lesson that tries to show the students the length of time over which the Bible was written. We do this by having a timeline on sheets that they place on the wall as we go. It serves as a reminder that the Old Testament stories happened a very long time ago and over a very long time and that the New Testament stories happened over a very short period. Seeing it all in a line like that makes it so much clearer!”

The Worship Retreat

Towards the end of Confirmation, the students and their parents attend a Worship Retreat in the Metroplex. On the retreat, they experience worship in different contexts, including a Jewish Synagogue, a Catholic Church, and a predominantly African American Methodist Church. As Georgia Harrison, our Associate Pastor, describes it, “They get to experience worship from A-Z.”

All of the students agreed that their experience at Hamilton Park United Methodist Church in Dallas was one of their favorites. Carson Minniear elaborates, “The service was fun and energetic. It was a way of worship that I haven’t experienced before.”

Phoebe Taylor agreed but added her appreciation for the experience at the Synagogue. “Everyone spoke a different language, but we were all worshipping there together, and that really opened my eyes.”

Georgia explains the purpose of taking students to experience each of these services, “We attend the Jewish Shabbat service because Jesus was Jewish. The entire Old Testament is Jewish scripture, upon which Christianity is built. We take the students to a Catholic service because all Christian denominations have roots in the Catholic church, and we go to an African American UMC so that they can get a glimpse of the amazing breadth of worship that is possible in the United Methodist Church. After each service, we talk about the similarities and differences between their worship and ours. We talk about why they worship as they do and why we do what we do in worship.”

Writing the Class Affirmation of Faith

On the Worship Retreat, the confirmands also work on their class Affirmation of Faith. Some of the student’s earliest lessons in Confirmation focus on the Trinity, addressing the big ideas about who God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit are and what they do. They spend the rest of their class time digging deeper into the details that make our faith what it is. Additionally, the confirmands are asked to read the Gospel of Mark before they can begin to write their Affirmation of Faith.

The actual process of writing the Affirmation of Faith takes three weeks. It starts before the Worship Retreat with brainstorming. “We let them, in small groups, tell an adult leader everything that comes to mind when they think about God or Jesus or the Holy Spirit. The adult leader writes everything down on a long list that often spans multiple pages,” Kim explains.

In the second week, the students collaborate to revise and refine their listed ideas. When they are on their retreat, Kim helps “the group as a whole winnow those lists to a handful of ideas and words that they all agree are vitally important to them.” Then, they “transform them, one part at a time, into sentences that make sense as a statement of faith.” After the retreat, on the third and final week, Kim presents the students with the Affirmation of Faith they’ve written and they work together to “polish it to be used on Confirmation Sunday.”

Meeting with the Senior Pastor

Once the students have their Affirmation of Faith, they have one task left before Confirmation Sunday: to meet with the senior pastor. During the week before the big event, the students come by the church office with a parent to meet with John McLarty. John describes these conversations as “one of the best things [he gets] to do as a pastor.” He explains that “it is a blessing to serve a church that takes seriously its investment in the faith development of young people and it is a privilege for [him] to invest some of [his] time in helping our kids along on their journey.” His enthusiasm for these conversations leads him to greet the children with a wide smile, eager to speak with them.

John’s conversations with the students begin with him asking about their experience with confirmation. He asks “what was fun and what they learned” and loves to hear them “talk about what they think membership in the church is all about and what their faith in Christ means to them.”

Discussing Membership

After listening to the students, John shares three things that he believes are important for every member of our church to understand.

“First, I walk them through the five aspects of our membership vows and talk about what it means to me for us all to support our church with our prayers, presence, gifts, service, and witness. Second, I assure each student that our United Methodist understanding of salvation, our doctrines and theology, and our practices are just as valid as expressions of Christianity as any other, despite what their friends from other denominations might tell them. And third, I encourage them to think about Confirmation, not as a ‘one and done’ kind of event, but as a step in a lifetime journey of faith. I hope each person’s faith in Christ helps guide and shape who they are for the rest of their lives. To do that, we must be intentional about cultivating our relationship with Jesus and the Church.”

As he meets with the confirmands, John has another motive beyond exchanging ideas. He hopes that through these one-on-one meetings, the students “will know that the Senior Minister of their church knows who they are and is interested in their continued faith development.” John explains, “I never want a child or teenager (or an adult for that matter,) to think that their pastor doesn’t know who they are or care about them.” He wants the children to feel seen and heard by him. To know that he is another adult in their lives who is invested in their faith and success.

Confirmation Sunday

Finally, on the first Sunday of February each year, the students are confirmed. They join the church as full members, surrounded by their teachers, family, mentors, and a congregation ready to support them. The students also help lead the worship service on this day. They share their Class Affirmation of Faith, join in the liturgy, and serve communion. It’s a big accomplishment for these students.

Kim English explains, “Confirmation Class asks for a commitment of participants and their families, and they always take it seriously. We ask them to come every week that they possibly can. If they can’t attend in person, they regularly attend via Facetime. If they have to miss altogether, they have a makeup lesson to do at home. Throughout our time together, they form a community of faith where they are free to learn, ask questions, and express their opinions. They understand that deciding to be confirmed is their own decision, not their parents or confirmation teachers. It may be the first truly individual, adult decision they make in their life. We have fun and find moments of celebration, but Confirmation is a big deal and these students know it.”

If you see one of this year’s confirmands, make sure to congratulate them on their hard work, and thank the teachers and mentors who helped them achieve this important milestone in their faith.

Confirmation 2024-25

Registration for the upcoming Confirmation Class beginning in August 2024 begins this Summer. Confirmation is an opt-in program. Please look for more information about registration coming in early July.