First, the title of this blog got my attention.
Second, the picture made me laugh out loud.
Third, I smiled while reading the explanation behind the picture.
This is selfish of me to say, but now I wish you had a video blog of your children’s sermons.
That way people like me could enjoy the show & learn too…
I love it, Joe!
Keep up the Good work!

The hope I guess would be that they would want to stay involved and engaged even after they get confirmed — and that is not always the case. We do have programs set up and not everyone wants to take advantage of them. Just like any other “church ritual” — we have people getting their babies baptized here that never show up again, we have people getting married here that are real active until after the wedding day….people have this perception that there are “have to’s” with in the church and “use” the church to accomplish what they believe they have to accomplish. I am sure some churches put rules and regs on who is allowed to do what when…..but is that the right thing to do?

This is just another one of those questions that I ask myself and I don’t know if I will ever have the perfect answer but that does not mean we stop trying!

Naturally, we were invited to join into adult bible study, but that was “too old”, if you get my meaning; too above us and the content was for people between 30-60, not still in the teen years. Yeah, we had young adult Sunday School, but it wasn’t the same.

Perhaps you have better programs at your church, but there wasn’t for mine growing up. So much of confirmation was theory and rules and regulations and we believe X and we preach Y and we do Z because of ABC. Something following up to that to say, “Ok, how do we apply these principles that you learned about for 3 years into politics, and economics, and history, and personal issues, and relationships…” and so forth. Moving on from the theoretical book learning to the real-life applicability aspects.

Just a thought…maybe you’re light years beyond this. And you’re right when you say the emphasis probably has to shift from trying to keep the young, pre-graduation youth in the church, because they’re most likely to split upon entering college or what have you, and instead engaging those that have come to the town, settled down, had kids, and are looking for somewhere to call home.

I think that many if not most of the youth coming into confirmation class are doing it because their parents make them. Even those active youth really don’t enjoy coming to confirmation. Now is that the fault of the program? Perhaps. Is that the program of the age of the kids? Perhaps – or perhaps it is a little bit of both.

What is the answer? I am not sure- at this point I do not think you are going to change the age of confirmation to Senior High age — at that point they are into so many things you might not get them to come and participate in the program.

I would love to see the mindset of confirmation change. That is to change it from kids “graduating” from church to kids finishing confirmation and continuing their faith journey to learn more about the church, learn more about their faith and learn more about themselves.

The question I think we should be asking is perhaps not how do we change confirmation, but how do we create programs that reach out to those post confirmation to the time they start coming back to church (which is late 20′s early 30′s when they start having kids).

At the time I went through confirmation, I thought I was ready myself for what it entailed and the complexities of my religion, but it wasn’t until much later that I realized that I was horribly wrong about that opinion. I can also say with confidence that there were plenty of kids who were going through the motions for their parents, or like it was a class in school, not as a life-important event and study in fundamental beliefs and world-view.

I wonder how many kids in how many classes were confirmed through simply because the pastor didn’t want to deal with trying to explain to the parents and others that the kids weren’t taking it seriously enough. (not that I suggest that you have that attitude, but there are a lot of pressures on the system to keep it rolling along smoothly).

Life changes so much from age 14 to about 25, and what with not only progressing through three major schools (middle, high, and college), but with hormones raging, bodies changing, friends, and responsibilities changing, it seems ill-placed to say, “We’re going to explain what this church believes and in 3 years you can decide if you want to ascribe to that officially or not.”

I dunno. I’m sure you want to make sure you hit th ekiddos up before they go off to college and other places, but…*shrugs* Does it ever strike you as, “too young”?

GK Chesterton: “The poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese.”

Voila: http://www.tastingtoeternity.com. This book is a poetic view of 30 of the best loved French cheeses with an additional two odes to cheese. Recipes, wine pairing, three short stories and an educational section complete the book.

From a hectic life in New York City to the peace and glories of the French countryside lead me to be the co-founder of http://www.fromages.com. Ten years later with the words of Pierre Androuet hammering on my brain:

“Cheese is the soul of the soil. It is the purest and most romantic link between humans and the earth.”

I took pen and paper; many reams later with the midnight oil burning Tasting to Eternity was born and self published.

I believe cheese and wine lovers should be told about this publication.

Enjoy.