This coming Sunday is one of my favorite LPC Sundays. Confirmation Sunday. After eight months of weekly, intense, fun, challenging, rewarding study, seven students from our 2017-2018 Confirmation class – six ninth graders and an eighth grader – will share statements of faith and lead the congregation in worship. What joy!
For now I will start with thanks. To Joe, Carol, Tyler, Casey and others who led the class. To Sunday School teachers and VBS leaders who have loved these seven since they were Angels and Bible Busy Bees. But especially, and particularly with this class, to a group of parents – in every instance – who took seriously their responsibilities as Christian parents. Baptismal promises kept.
As we worship on Sunday (9:45 service – 8:30 and 11:30 services will hear the Word proclaimed from Acts 17 – why not worship early or late but stay or come early to worship with the kids!), we will add our thanks for the many ways God has been so faithful to the students, their families, and the church. It’s going to be a good Sunday!
Among the announcements and notices stuffed into the worship bulletin will be an insert containing the faith statements written by each of the seven students. They are a gift to us from the kids; a promise to themselves, to God, and to the church by the kids.
This past Tuesday evening, the seven confirmands read their faith statements to the elders gathered for a Session meeting. Then the conversation began, the elders required to satisfy themselves on behalf of the congregation of the students’ commitment to Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, their intention to follow Christ as his disciple. The conversation was good and the vote to receive the seven as full members in the church was an enthusiastic unanimous.
When God’s people declare their faith they are telling themselves and the world who and whose they are.
“A wandering Aramean was my father. And he went down into Egypt and sojourned there, few in number, and there he became a nation…” (Deuteronomy 26:5)
“We have this mind among ourselves which is ours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant…” (Philippians 2:5-6)
“I believe in God the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, and in Jesus Christ our Lord…” (Apostles’ Creed)
“I belong—body and soul, in life and in death—not to myself but to my faithful Savior, Jesus Christ…” (Heidelberg Catechism)
The Confirmation students’ statements of faith vary in length and in poetry, but all are good and represent the students well. Together they are a collage of colors and reflections and things learned and experienced. They are beautiful.
One of the elders at Tuesday’s Session meeting encouraged the students to keep a copy of their faith statements and to return to them from time to time, like an Ebenezer, a reminder that “thus far has God has God helped us” (1 Samuel 7:12).
Sunday will not be the last time the seven Confirmation students will declare their faith. They will do so in what they say and how they live on Monday at school, Tuesday at home, Wednesday with friends, Thursday at Youth Group. They will write new statements of faith as they prepare for mission trips and study grants. Those new statements will use different words, reflect new experiences. But each, in its own way, will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father.
See you Sunday