5 Good Confirmation Models
How to bring Mid Highs into the Church Family
The tornado siren blasted in the middle of a Wednesday 5 p.m. confirmation class. It was my first year teaching confirmation as a recently ordained pastor. I froze in panic.
The seven 5th-9th graders were giving me the Look that says they are waiting for the adult to do something! Seventh-grade Carie said, “This happens a lot. We should go to the church basement.” The church had a basement?
They led me outside to the flip doors that led to a brick cellar that might have been where the vampires kept their coffins. David encouraged me to finish the confirmation lesson. Tornado sirens are a part of daily life in southern Indiana in a Tornado Alley.
The Purpose of Confirmation
Confirmation should guide young people into an active faith in Jesus Christ. As a youth pastor, I have taught over 20 confirmation classes. Classes from that Indiana group of 5 to 30+ at the big church.
Ninety-five percent of those students joined their churches at the end of their confirmation class. The ones that didn’t join did so with integrity and understanding of the meaning of the membership vows (though their parents were not always happy).
For most churches, the purpose of confirmation is to integrate young people into church membership. And, this is often secondary, to help young people choose Jesus.
The Good News
The good news of those confirmation classes is that all those youth learned, discussed, and experienced how much Jesus Christ loves them. We studied foundational ideas that I broke into 5 tracks for my own curriculum that I used from 2006-2017:
God/Jesus Christ/Holy Spirit
The Bible
The Church
Mission/Service
Reformed Theology
My Foundational curriculum model is below.
The Bad News
The confirmation bad news is that confirmation was not the determining factor for the formation of a living faith or active church membership. What matters is the faith of the parents and/or 3-5 adults who live their faith and share it with young people (from a church perspective mission trips were the best for high schoolers and summer camps as a church group for mid-highs for giving young people these spiritual mentors).
5 Good Models for Confirmation
After teaching 20+ confirmation classes, I have used or studied a lot of confirmation curricula. A lot of great curriculum is always coming out so if you have thoughts on others I should examine let me know in the comments. Here are the 5 I recommend:
Making Disciples by Rev. Dr. William Willimon (13 weeks)
A Foundational Course (14-20 weeks)
Retreat Based (3 weekends)
Retreat Week
Making Disciple
Bishop William Willimon, United Methodist Church, was the Dean of the Chapel at Duke University when he created this 13-week confirmation curriculum. This was the single most effective curriculum I ever used.
It involves training adult mentors to meet 1:1 with the confirmands. Each week both have done a parallel lesson in their books. They meet and discuss what they learned. Or they do the activity proscribed for that week’s lesson - like a service project.
We used this at the medium-sized church for three years. The students and mentors bonded, parents met new people who cared for their youth, and the youth came to church to see and be seen by their mentor even three years after confirmation.1
A Foundational Course
A foundational course is set by the individual church. It is class-based. It covers the important lessons that a Christian Education committee might want its 7-9th graders to know before they join the church. The class would aim to finish around Easter with the youth joining the church the week after Easter2 or in late April if an early Easter.3
The one I lead had 4-5 adult mentors who had 3-4 confirmands in their small group. One of us, or another staff member, would teach a 40-minute lesson with built-in discussion time (questions provided), for the small groups to share, then a summary would be shared with the whole group.
For many years we had a fall retreat to help bond the mentors with their confirmands. On this retreat, we often covered the big topic of worship.
Big God, Big Questions: Confirmation for a Growing Faith
This is the latest curriculum of the Presbyterian Church (USA). It was developed out of a multi-denominational research study called the Confirmation Project. The Big God, Big Questions website summarizes the curriculum as:
Retreat Based (3 weekends)
This model gives validity to the parent/student reports of how busy the youth are. The class works as three-weekend retreats that run from Friday at 5 p.m. - Sunday 11 a.m. Our retreat model used these themes:
Fall Retreat (late September/October) - Worship
Winter (January/February) - “The Case for Christ” Lee Strobel
Spring (late March/April) - The Church
We would have confirmation mentors who went to all the retreats as well as select high schoolers who served as leaders as well.
The Winter Retreat
For the winter retreat, we would have youth Witnesses, Judges, Prosecutors, and the Defense. The Prosecutors would seek to put witnesses (from the gospel stories) on the stand to prove that Jesus of Nazareth is the Messiah. This was one of the most popular youth ministry offerings. Youth loved this.
Retreat (week based)
After 20+ classes of confirmation and 35+ mission trips, this might be a great way to teach confirmation. This could be done at a summer camp or conference center. Each day would have morning lessons, afternoon fun, with evening worship and small groups.
Someday I hope to teach such a confirmation class. Dreaming big this would be across state lines. Let’s bring youth and mentors together to really see how the church is bigger than one congregation.
In conclusion
Confirmation comes in many forms. The bottom line is that young people need to get to know adult mentors who are active in the church and willing to walk alongside young people in a safe, encouraging atmosphere, where questions/doubts are valued and supported.
All youth need to know that their church loves them, values them, and teaches them how valuable they are. Valuable whether or not they choose to join the church. Our young people need to know we love them. Period.
The next time I worked to transition a church to this model, I ran into all kinds of pushback: a) We won’t be able to get enough mentors. b) We need a traditional class. c) How can we trust mentors to teach the right things?
Confirmation the week after Easter boosts attendance on a low Sunday. We would avoid this if this was spring break.
Always end confirmation early in May as the school year will eat the weekends and make the parents have to make complicated choices which create conflict around something that is supposed to be joyful.