Confirmation - what's it all about?

In the Church of England, in common with a number of other churches (but not all), simply being baptised doesn't mean that you can take the bread and wine at a Communion service. The church considers that this is something very special and that people ought to be carefully prepared for this unique experience - to understand the story we are remembering, and think about how we can to meet God in bread and wine.

The usual path to receiving Communion is to attend classes or a regular group meeting for a time, then, at a special Service (usually shared between a number of different churches) a Bishop will ask you important questions about your faith, gives you a special blessing and Confirms you by laying hands on you. After this, you can take Communion in any Anglican church, and many other churches also (though not in Roman Catholic churches). This often takes place when young people are teenagers - or perhaps just before - but often people wait until they are adults - of any age! - before they want to make this very public commitment to church and to God. Confirmation is essentially about affirming for yourself the vows other people may have made on your behalf if you were baptised as an infant, or is the adult entry into membership of the church, when you would be baptised and confirmed at the same service.

In more recent years, the Church of England has given permission for churches to admit baptised children to take the bread and wine BEFORE they actually make the very mature commitment involved at Confirmation. This is called 'Admitting children to Communion before Confirmation' and the Church of the Good Shepherd Church Council voted to adopt this policy in June 2009.

Our last Confirmation Service, at which 16 wonderful people (a mixture of adults and young people) were confirmed by Bishop John was on July 14th, and was a fantastic and joyful experience. The next one has not yet been booked, but is likely to be in Summer 2011, so if you are interested in being prepared for Confirmation you will need to wait a while and keep an eye out for information in Shore Line or Church Notices. Chances are that a group will not re-start until after Easter 2011, but do speak to Gail if you are interested.