Confirmation Again

Dr Abacus responded to my previous post to say that his daughter was confirmed with a group of others from a range of local churches, so that was a shared event. This is standard practice, in fact, unless a single church can muster enough confirmands to justify a bishop turning out to do the magic, and that rarely happens (in Guildford Diocese you are now supposed to have at least twelve). In fact, the usual time you see a bishop visiting a church to confirm its members alone, it tends to be at trad-Catholic churches under Alternative Episcopal Oversight, as they are usually so far between that joining up isn't feasible.

As I said, my issue really is with what might get taught, unquestioningly, in confirmation preparation. Different groups also require different approaches, too, and paradoxically the smaller the group the more you can spot their individuality and the sense a tailored approach has. I haven't had that many confirmands since I was ordained, so I can pretty much remember them all.

At Lamford: Seven teenagers and one retired professional man.
At Goremead: One teenage girl.
At Swanvale Halt: on separate occasions, a teenage boy; a middle-aged professional woman; six mixed adults aged 40-60; another teenage boy, the curate's son; a professional young man; two middle-aged women.

On none of these occasions was I able to use exactly the same preparation; I found myself adapting my model material to each of their specific circumstances and background. The earlier teenage boy at Swanvale Halt was especially interesting as his level of comprehension was pretty basic. The host parish for the confirmation service had asked for written 'testimonies' to include in the order of service and I had to write his for him (at least he wasn't expected to deliver it out loud); when we arrived, we discovered that all the other confirmands were confident, slightly hyper middle-class teenage girls from prep schools. Poor Luke stuck out dreadfully and he would never have got on with combined preparation. I do deplore the habit of asking confirmands for 'testimonies' which is a typical middle-class Church practice. What happens if you're inarticulate, or just shy? Furthermore it pushes you towards thinking about your spiritual development in a classically evangelical manner, identifying the point of catastrophic crisis at which you 'turn to Christ', and for most people exaggerates the darkness of the time before and the light of the time after. I don't want to launch tender souls into that! So, again, if there's going to be joint confirmation prep anywhere near here, I want to do it ...