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Update 50 pages 14.

A watered-down Confirmation?

From a speech by Paul Brett (Chelmsford), General Synod in July 2005.
 

Our congregation has many young families in it, 65 confirmation candidates in the last three years, and 170 people at our main service last Sunday, half of whom were young families. And I have in my congregation what I fear may be a typical example of what ‘communion before confirmation’ can lead to.

‘W’ and ‘K’ moved to us from a near-by parish where they’d been receiving communion. As I got to know them, seeing that they were rather young, I asked their parents, and was told they’d been confirmed. Two years on, or so, I checked this again. This time they weren’t quite so sure, couldn’t find any documentation, and, after further enquiries, decided that their children had not been confirmed. So they joined our confirmation course, and their situation was ‘normalised’, or whatever the Synod lawyers would want me to call it, last February.

If we go down this route, I fear other families won’t know the difference between ‘admission to communion’ and ‘confirmation’ itself.

What the Guidelines amount to is this. The children need to come, in effect, from practising Christian families. (How on earth am I to apply this fairly, when many of our families come regularly but infrequently? It would be a minefield!) Then, the children need to understand what they’re doing; there has to be an admission ceremony; their names have to be entered in a register; and they have to receive a certificate of some sort. This sounds to me pretty much like what happens with confirmation.

It looks like a ‘watered-down’ version of the real thing. People won’t know, later on, if they’ve been confirmed or not. In effect, the responsibility for admitting young people to communion will pass from the bishop to the incumbent, and with less adequate preparation. Is that what we want? I think not.

People understand that there are hurdles to leap at various stages in life, and that preparation is required - and they will come to realise this more and more in what we’re now calling the ‘Olympic Diocese of Chelmsford’! They look forward to ‘the big day’, whatever it is, and remember it all their lives, if it’s well done. We shouldn’t be depriving young people of this experience as a result of a desire to avoid such horrors as giving children Smarties or Sunday School stickers instead at the altar rail. I give those who’ve not been confirmed a blessing, and this has its own impact and significance.

Let’s stop this confusing process before it gets any further.

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This web page was last updated on 22nd January 2006.