So Much To Celebrate
May is an exciting time, a busy time, filled with lots of opportunities for individuals and families to celebrate. Mother’s Day, college and high school graduations, all the end of year banquets for athletics, band, and choir. Throw in a few Eagle projects, Court of Honors, and then Memorial Day and the month is jam packed with opportunities to celebrate.
This Sunday, we will be celebrating in three big ways… Our Church's Birthday (31 Years), Our Graduates, and Confirmation.
The confirmation service will be at 10:15 a.m. We will be confirming 3 sixth and seventh graders who have been on a journey of learning, sharing and serving together over the past few months.
In our United Methodist tradition, many children are baptized when they are infants. When a baby is baptized, their parents make the vows of baptism. They profess their own faith in Christ and then promise to raise their child in the faith, taking them to church, praying with them, reading to them the bible, living a rhythm of discipleship, so that they may one day accept God’s grace and “choose to lead a Christian life.”
In Baptism, the congregation also participates and commits to playing an important role in helping raise children in the faith. The congregation promises to “live a life that becomes the Gospel.” In other words, we promise to live out our faith with and in front of these children (BE A WITNESS) so they will learn how much God loves them and see what a life of true discipleship looks like.
Our hope as a congregation, as we nurture and teach (and learn from!) the children around us, at VBS, church camp, Kool Club, Food Share, Hands on Mission, and Worship is that they will fall in love with Jesus and choose for themselves to be a disciple. In the sixth or seventh grade or when a person is ready to make that choice, to profess their faith openly and to choose a life of following Jesus, they are confirmed as a Christian and as a member of the church. We call it “confirmation” because they are confirming the baptismal vows made on his/her behalf.
Confirmation class is a place for questions and wrestling, for asking and answering questions, and it is a time for discernment. For some, the next step after confirmation class is continuing to explore and question, for some it is baptism, and for others it is confirmation and church membership.
Confirmation service is a huge moment for these young people and for our congregation. They are choosing to follow Jesus! They are choosing to be a disciple. That’s something to celebrate!
Being a Christian is a lifelong and life altering journey, and confirmation is one step on that journey. Confirmation is not a starting point, nor is it an ending point. It’s a step. It’s a big step.
I know our whole congregation will want to join in the celebration. I hope that you will join me in praying for these young people as they prepare for Sunday and consider sending them a card in the weeks ahead to encourage them in their decision to take this next step as well as to welcome them into church membership.
Most of all, I hope you will be here on Sunday to witness their vows and to renew your own commitment to Christ. To be a cloud of witnesses cheering them on the journey, celebrating what God has done and is doing in their lives and in the life of our church.
With Gratitude,
Rodney
Rodney Whitfield
Senior Pastor