Confirmation Sunday at Abiding Presence

A Note about Worship this Weekend:
Saturday at 6:00 p.m. & Sunday at 8:45 a.m. - Regular Services (60 minutes)
Sunday at 11:00 a.m. - Confirmation Service (2 hours)

Please plan accordingly as our confirmation service will be much longer than a usual Abiding Presence service.

It’s confirmation weekend at Abiding Presence! This Sunday at the 11:00 a.m. service 15 of our young people will affirm the promises made for them at their baptisms and we will pray for the Holy Spirit to be stirred up in them to confirm their faith. It is one more joyful, Spirit-filled opportunity to witness how God is at work in the lives of our young people.

What I remember about my own confirmation experience are relationships that I made during the two years of my life I spent in confirmation classes. There were a group of four of us who became the best of friends, hanging out at youth choir and confirmation each Tuesday night and during Sunday School on Sunday morning. In the midst of the trials of the rest of my middle school friendships, those three girls became the friends that I could count on not matter what.

Confirmation was also the time that my relationship with my pastors developed into something beyond just a hello in the handshake line on Sunday mornings. My pastors came to really know me and, in turn, I came to know them. They became people who I felt I could talk when I needed a listening ear and they became my trusted adult as I navigated tough decisions into high school and beyond.

Finally, confirmation was the time in which my relationship with God started to mean something. It was in the midst of my first year of confirmation that I heard the call to be a pastor. I often joke that I felt called to be a pastor before I even knew what a pastor did all day. Regardless, that call to the ministry was loud, clear and nurtured within me throughout those confirmation years.

As I prepare to now be the pastor who gets to lay her hands on our youth’s head as they are confirmed this weekend, I am filled with awe at this amazing group of young people. They are a fun, faithful and passionate bunch who don’t shy away from asking hard questions. I pray that the time that they have spent in confirmation may be as formative to their lives as it once was to mine.

This year we’re doing something new with confirmation. Each of our confirmation youth will receive sponsors – members of the congregation – who will invest in their young person is his/her post-confirmation life. During the confirmation service, the congregation will be asked, “People of God, do you promise to support these sisters and brothers and pray for them in their life in Christ?” The entire congregation will make the promise, responding, “We do, and we ask God to help and guide us.” We want to make sure, though, that each confirmand has two adults in the congregation (outside of their parents, pastors, confirmation mentors, senior high youth advisers and church staff) who are on board to actively fulfill this promise specifically for them. I believe that congregation sponsors have the potential of making a huge difference in the lives of our youth post-confirmation as they experience the care and support of the Abiding Presence faith family in tangible ways.

Thank you to our congregation sponsors and to all of you who will help us to support and pray for our confirmands in their life in Christ.