Every-Other-Year Confirmation
*Our program year begins Sunday, September 17, 2023.
Our Confirmation program is for ninth grade students. Over the course of one year, high school freshman and sophomores are paired with mentors and meet twice a month. Confirmands are welcomed into the life of our worshipping community and have faith-based conversations emerging from their everyday lives including such topics as: Music, Prayer, Creation, Our Bodies, Grief and Resurrection, etc. Confirmands have multiple off-site experiences, a weekend retreat to Chicago, and ultimately NAME their faith by writing a faith statement and joining the church if they so choose.
Below is listed the ways we enrich our youth and the opportunities for them to grow in their relationships and faith.
FELLOWSHIP
Wednesday evening sessions focus on basic practices of the Christian faith. We use Way to Live: Christian Practices for Teens, by Dorothy Bass and Don C. Richter, as a guide for learning about topics such as:
Life—Getting in touch with our longing to live fully, through the kind of freedom, love
Stuff—Dealing with stuff in ways that deepen our relationships with God, other people and the whole created world.
Play—A part of God’s good creation and important to a balanced, happy life.
Forgiveness—Receiving and sharing God’s forgiveness helps us to mend what was torn and frees us to build a future with one another.
EXPERIENCES
We use experiential learning to explore different Christian practices and world religions. Throughout
the year we experience worship at Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, visit the Hindu Temple
of Greater Chicago, and discuss grief and resurrection at Wichmann Funeral Home in Appleton.
MENTORING
Each Confirmand is paired with an adult mentor who shares the Confirmand’s faith journey.
Our Confirmands are supported by a full community of adults with whom they can share an abundant life in Christ and practice the life of the Christian faith. Read more on being a mentor.
TESTIMONY
Toward the end of the confirmation experience, each youth crafts a faith statement, giving creative expression to a faith that is at once radically personal and universally shared among the community
of Christian believers.
Read Confirmation Expectations here.
