Today was Confirmation Sunday at our church. Four young men and women, and one adult, confessed their Christian faith before the congregation and took their first communion. Proud parents, grandparents, families and friends crowded the pews to witness this special rite of passage.
As I looked at the four teens, probably around 14 years old, I recognized one immediately. She’s always in church with her family. The others I knew because they are on the rotation to serve as acolytes. You don’t often see them in church if they don’t have to be there.
Many churches lament what is known as the “post-confirmation drop-out.” The teens and often their parents, make sure they are “done” and that’s it. Pictures of confirmands of years past adorn church walls and, if anyone looks at them they ask “who is that?” or “whatever happened to her?”
This morning my mind wandered. The sermon was great, but I was thinking about how congregations can keep in touch with confirmands after their big day. I assumed most of them if not all have cell phones. That means they are likely into text messaging. Could a congregation assign a young adult, or youth leader to be a text-message mentor? I’m not talking about texting a Bible verse every day, but maybe a couple of times a week checking in, letting them know someone has noticed them and cares for them in Christ.
I even thought about a text message game/exercise that could be passed around a confirmation class during the week. The teacher texts “I believe in God the Father Almighty” to one class member. He or she then texts to another member “maker of heaven and earth”…and so on until the class has worked through the Apostles’ Creed. You could do something similar with any part of the catechism. Not only would it help memorization, but it puts the Christian faith right into the daily life of the teen…exactly where it should be.
You could do the same with e-mail, but it would need to be with adult confirmands because today’s teens don’t use e-mail. “It’s so yesterday. My parents use it.”
Thinking digital first for confirmation, do you have any more ideas to share?
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About Me
- Ian Adnams
- Serving Lutheran Church—Canada as director of communications for more than 16 years, Ian Adnams is always looking for new ways for churches to connect with their communities and Christians to communicate the Christian faith.
7 comments:
I would be interested in a statistical analysis of the percentage of confirmation instructors in the Lutheran Church who would be comfortable with integrating, or even just able to integrate said technologies.
That strikes me as a fundemental-level problem...
I believe a lot of us think about the same thing. At last years LCC-East District's 'EvangelFest' there was one session titled "Disappearing Confirmands", where they had a few Young Adults from "EDLYA" as well as other Post-Confirmand teens, speak about how they keep involved with the Church and grow in their faith.
As I was reading about your idea of "text messaging", it reminded me of the site 'boostup.org' Where you can send youth text messages or emails to help encourage them.
(It'd be neat to have one that was similar but to help individuals stay connected with Christ)
I think that a bigger factor is that the form of our church services in so many Lutheran churches just isn't relevant to the younger generation. I wonder how the retention rates for churches with contemporary forms of worship compares with those of purely traditional forms.
I also find it interesting that I hear lots of churches more concerned about simply retaining their confirmands than they are about reaching out and evangelizing a lost generation with the gospel of Christ.
I know instructors who would be willing to use text messaging... but I'd veer toward social networks like Facebook or even Twitter. It's so terribly easy to miss a text message (accidentally or otherwise), and there's very little way to exert social pressure through a text message. Not only are Facebook and Twitter "current" enough for today's teenage population, you'll find that keeping Confirmands around is impossible unless they're part of the church community in some way. Social networks tend to lend themselves much better to such things than phones - but no amount of tweeting or poking can make up for a lack of face-to-face contact on a semi-regular basis. Let me know what you think.
Based on the limited research that has been done on this issue, no ,matter what the worship form, contemporary or not, no matter if they went to Christian private schools or public ones, the drop-out numbers remains essentially the same.
The only major divergence seems to be between those grading themselves conservative theologically and liberal. It seems that the more "inclusive" a church body is, the faster they lose members. Of all ages.
For me, the pink elephant afflicting the church today is this whole notion of consumerism...i.e., we have to do something get youth/unchurched interested to buy and stay with what we're selling...and the hook is always something OTHER than Word or Sacraments. I'm new at all this, so maybe I'm wrong, but what if we actually taught our youth/confirmands that the reason to 'be in church' is not to find friends or hear nice music, but to receive the forgiveness of sins and strength to live a godly life via God's presence in Word and Sacrament? Sure, relationships and so on are important byproducts of God's working among His people, but unless the core is held up as the core, I fear for what the future holds...
O my people, hear my teaching; listen to the words of my mouth. I will open my mouth in parables, I will utter hidden things, things from of old - what we have heard and known, what our fathers have told us. We will not hide them from their children; we will tell the next generation the praiseworthy deeds of the LORD, his power, and the wonder he has done. He decreed statutes for Jacob and established the law in Israel, which he commanded our forefathers to teach their children, so the next generation would know them, even the children yet to be born, and they in turn would tell their children. Then they would put their trust in God and would not forget his deeds but would keep his commands. Psalm 78.
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