1. The Church owes its young members an accessible clarity in faith and the convincing presence of the »Benefactions of Christ« (P. Melanch- thon)
The Evangelical Church in Germany has expressed clear positions on religious education in school (1994), on Protestant adult educa- tion (1997), and now on preparing young people for confirmation. This unmistakably clarifies the importance that is placed on its ed- ucational role and the relationship between faith and education. We are living in a society defined by education and lifelong learning, and the Christian faith itself demands the accessible clarity to which educational work can contribute. In this context, it is important to relate the Church’s three statements to each other so as to understand
their inherent interrelation. The work with young people preparing for confirmation must be understood not in isolation, but in its connection with the Church’s other educational efforts. It aims to give the confirmands experience with faith, open up its contents to them, and offer them a spiritual home in their Christian community in the context of a broader theory and practice of its educational responsibility.
As outlined in the statements on school and adult religious educa- tion, confirmation preparation in future will aim to gain stronger profiles in two aspects and simultaneously in two different direc- tions. On the one hand, the children, youths and adults must be taken even more seriously and even more competently addressed as subjects, not objects, of education. The aim must be to educate towards religious independence and a mature Christian faith. Reli- gious education in a plural and open society cannot exist without embracing this right. On the other hand, the Church must stress more strongly and more immediately the experience of the Christian faith and the »Benefactions of Christ« (P. Melanchthon) both in its responsibility as an actor in public education and in its immediate role inside the Church itself (such as in educating confirmands).
2. The Church must accept and take seriously both the positive expecta- tions and experiences of children and young people and their disappoint- ments and rejections.
The previous chapter has shown that viewing the Church from the perspective of children and youths is an overdue undertaking. This ecclesiological perspective has gained important impulses through the Synod of the Evangelical Church in Germany of 1994 in Halle (see introduction). The Church’s fulfilment of its role centrally depends on the fact that, and the manner in which, it accompanies the young generation as part of the whole People of God. Care for the young and rejuvenation of the Church are now inseparable interrelated. If we view the future of the Church in connection with the youth question, it gains a deeper contour than that provided by a mere
review of prognosticated dwindling membership numbers, signifi- cant and serious though these may be. Structural considerations on the concentration, regionalisation and refinancing or Church work in response to these quantitative shifts alone are inadequate to ad- dress this. Now, the interior perspective takes centre stage: How do young people encounter and experience the Church? And which aspects play a central role in this encounter?
If young people are disappointed here – for example with the Church services – (cf. 3.3), this can lead to a demotivating of their ties to the Church as a dimension of Christian community life and faith, even though they may selective continue to take recourse to the Church for orientation in their future life paths, especially in liminal situations such as weddings, Baptisms and funerals (vgl. 2.2).
3. Young people face considerable life challenges at the age of confirma- tion.
Young people must go through the process of defining themselves separate from their parents, accept themselves as a girl and woman or as a boy and man, develop their own values and make difficult career choices in the face of uncertain and often gloomy future prospects. In the past, it was assumed that young people would au- tomatically grow into a reliable and lasting system of customs and values that influenced or even determined the views and habits of everyone. Today, people live in a multitude of different environments and cultures at work and home, in their private and professional lives, religion and daily life, family and school. These spheres no longer form a cohesive whole. Instead, each individual must shape one for him- or herself by choosing from an immeasurably broad range of offers. Freedom of choice has become obligation to choose.
This also applies to the meaning that God and religion holds in an individual’s life. Even youths who are supported by a family tradi- tion of Church life or a Christian environment ultimately have to answer this question themselves.
Attending confirmation classes is no longer a matter of course. They choose to attend. This heightens the profile of their expectations, making both a challenge and opportunity. Classes must be worth- while and profitable for attendees; if they fail to address their inter- ests, questions and expectations, it risks turning their distanced ex- pectancy into rejection or apathy. That is why confirmation classes must include not just issues of family, but increasingly embrace questions of extra-familiar ties in peer groups and trends in youth culture.
4. Young people come with little concrete knowledge, but they can con- tribute their elementary religious ideas and concepts.
The parents of young people today tend to take a positive but dis- tanced or outright negative position towards the Church in family contexts. Equally, the Church, faith and religion rarely feature in other areas of their life. Thus, most young people who come to confirmation classes enter a world they are unfamiliar with and which differs from the normal reality of their lives. In many cases, it is their first conscious encounter with the Christian faith and a Christian community. Only where Christian religious instruction (Christenlehre) in East Germany, Sunday school, or the work of its communities and charities in both East and West reach them is this usually not the case. That is why the Church must continue to ad- dress children, both in an early religious education in school and outside of it.
Research in religious education shows that despite a decline in reli- gious knowledge, young people usually have individual religious concepts and beliefs and often privately practice religion. They do ask meaning and faith questions. However, these “elementary experi-
ences and access routes” (cf. 3.6) are encountered less in the context
of Church activities or an environment, life and language shaped by Christian practices, let alone familiar forms of theological thought, but in individual life, ‘encoded’ into their environment and personal biographies.
This demands that teachers be interested in what the students can contribute, that they listen and pay attention to them. They must find out where religion and faith have personal significance and connect to these aspects.
5. Confirmation classes are pedagogically very demanding. They can only succeed if the young attendees are accepted as partners and full participants in them.
Confirmation classes are an extremely challenging field of Church community relations. Not only does it unite young people of very different educational backgrounds, sharing the pedagogical and be- havioural difficulties frequently affecting school education in general, but its own significance has changed fundamentally. Therefore, past efforts towards a reconstitution of confirmation education in both East and West Germany have mostly concentrated on pedagogic is- sues (cf. 1.3). This continues to be a vital concern. Though confirma- tion classes in theory are to mutually relate theological questions and the concrete realities and interests of attendees, but reality often falls short of this ideal. Classes are structured as traditional material-ori- ented one-way instruction, frequently more so than the (much re- formed) school RE is. Confirmation education must not ignore de- velopments in modern schools, where the learning competence of students, their ability to independently design and control learning processes, is fostered and developed. Confirmands must be able to participate actively in classes with their questions, interests, desires, and also their discomfort with and resistance to some issues. This way alone can a self-determined learning and understanding be fostered which we regard as crucial to an independent journey of discovery into the Christian faith. Young confirmands not only want to have a say in the subjects discussed, they also want to be part of planning shared experiences, develop into a community, and celebrate together, and they are willing to go to considerable lengths in their efforts (cf. 3.7). Instructional elements must therefore be placed in a broader context. The approach of mutual discovery takes the principles and
tenets of faith seriously (cf. 6.) and embeds confirmation education into broader community life (cf. 7.) in a process of discovery initiated and guided by the confirmands themselves. Liturgical and meditative offers such as the experience of silence, the discovery of the liturgical symbolic language and the ecclesiastical space, and similar activities can be used in support of this (cf. 2.3 and 3.6).
An improved and continuous professional training for pastors and church staff has increased the preparedness to participate in these pedagogical responsibilities. Nonetheless, all who undertake this dif- ficult and demanding task need constant encouragement and sup- port. According to a survey of pastors in Westphalia, almost half of the respondents like to give confirmation lessons ‘much’ or ‘very much’ while only 11 % stated they did not like to teach them. The same survey showed, however that confirmation education features less prominently in the hierarchy of the manifold demands that community work made on the time of pastors that most respondents themselves thought desirable. This fact limits any reform effort that aims to improve classes by optimising pedagogical qualifications and material circumstances. Confirmation education must first of all not be a task limited to pastors alone (cf. 7.). Nonetheless, being ulti- mately responsible for it, they must receive the appropriate training for their role in the future church and its generational exchange in the course of their academic and theological training.
6. Viewing confirmation education and confirmation itself solely from a pedagogical or didactic perspective is not enough. The Church’s work with confirmands requires an elementary theological profile.
The theological and educational profile of confirmation education must combine two elementary demands – its theological direction, and the interests of the young attendees. This twin perspective is not easy to reconcile; world and faith are often viewed as polar opposites. In this context, the perspective of elementarisation, the reduction to basic principles, offers a new outlook. Addressing the elementary experiences and access routes of the young people (cf. 4.) means
an elementary understanding of the connection of faith to life.
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Addressing life and faith must combine in such a way that the confirmands see Christian faith as concrete, accessible and un- derstandable and they are able to find their own access to it. Enough time must be allowed for this.
an elementary structure of the Christian faith: The insights gained
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in addressing individual aspects and projects must be placed in a wider frame of reference. This could be provided – by way of an example of elementary access to faith – through Luther’s Small
Catechism or the Heidelberg Catechism. Faith thus is to be ad-
dressed with regard to its relation to Creation,
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its relation to Salvation and
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its relation to the congregation.
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an elementary access to the sacraments of Baptism and the Eucharist:
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This aspect illustrates particularly well that an individual discov- ery of faith is not limited to intellectual comprehension and crit- ical reasoning – however important these faculties are especially at the age of confirmation – but also encompasses a celebration of faith, its actualisation in life and an invitation to share in it.
7. The confirmands should come to know life in their parish and encoun- ter people there who live their Christian faith and bear witness to it.
Faith must not only confront the confirmands as a taught doctrine, but must be encountered and experienced in concrete life. New conceptions of ‘open confirmation classes’ (offene Konfirmandenar-
beit) therefore take place outside the classroom. Many parishes offer
internships (e.g. in Church social services), elective subjects, projects, and meetings of confirmands. This allows them to explore and ex- perience parish life and to discover, how this (beyond the individual parish) extends into the many aspects of life where faith becomes manifest and relevant.
Alongside this discovery of the parish, the question must be asked how the parish itself can contribute to working with confirmands.
An important aspect here is the open encounter with people who represent faith and are willing to engage in dialogue on the matter. First and foremost, this would be the pastors teaching the class. Their example should make visible to the attendees what faith signifies in their life and profession, that the pastors have time for them, and take an interest in them and support them. However, alongside them, other parish members should be available for teaching con- firmands. This includes Church staff (educators, catechets, deacons and deaconesses), but also young people and adults who have already been confirmed. Successfully integrating the confirmands’ parents offers a twin opportunity to show how faith and life can combine. More possible identification figures and a broader range of experi- ences open up to the students.
The East German pre-unification idea of a “confirming action by the congregation” meant to accompany confirmands in conflict situations inasmuch as that was possible (cf. 1.1). The same can ap- ply – though under very different preconditions – to young people in West Germany. This pastoral dimension of confirmation educa- tion is likely to increase in importance in future.
In short, the age of confirmation can be understood as an “explora- tion of the realm of the Church” and a “symbolic possession of a new life phase’s territory” (H. Schröer). If such explorations are to come to a good end, confirmation education needs support from the community that allows “living, believing and learning in a dia-
logue of generations” (H. B. Kaufmann).
8. The parish must approach confirmands and offer them spaces of their own.
Confirmation education has developed a more stable and tried foun- dation over the past cycles of reform. Parishes recognise its value and role. Conversely, young people, too, acknowledge that it is a valu- able tool for, in approaching, engaging with, and embracing faith, they must engage with the parish.
they are welcome, but also free to be themselves. For all the recogni- tion, due to the efforts made by communities, a perspective shift (cf. introduction and 2.4) remains necessary to achieve this goal. We encounter confirmands as young people who for a while share life in our communities, and who eventually become part of them (cf. 9.). In place of the expectations that a parish has of ‘its’ confirmands, particularly for the time after their confirmation, we must ask of them their expectations from the parish. How are they perceived? Do they have a voice in it – for example in the governing boards? Are they but ‘apprentices’ or ‘guests’, or fully part and welcome?
9. The confirmands themselves are part of the parish.
This is the decisive issue: confirmands are not just in the parish to come to know it – they are an integral part of it. They are important for what they are. Any serious appreciation of Baptism makes this view inescapable. Traditional confirmation education, though, has often embraced it only in part. It was designed to introduce confir- mands to the parish, to familiarise them with the Eucharist and direct them towards the goal of confirmation, after which they would feel and act as ‘full members’ of their parish. Against this view we must state that the position of a parish vis-a-vis its confirmands – whether they themselves can be and feel members in it or not – is proved not least by the degree to which they can explore and design their place in it. “The orientation of confirmation education towards the time after confirmation rather than as a period in its own right goes a long way to explaining the crisis it is in” (from a Swedish study).
Confirmation education has already reacted to these challenges. Alongside the traditional lessons which still predominate as a format, weekend retreats have an established presence nowadays. Some par- ishes have had positive experiences with holiday retreats while oth- ers are experimenting with offering confirmands subject-specific seminars.
10. Confirmation education must network with youth work.
Local parishes with any kind of youth work already have a wealth of experiences on how to approach young people and integrate them into the broader parish. Tapping into this resource and opening con- firmation education to the broader universe of youth work can defuse difficulties often inherent in the situation of confirmands. This re- quires new conceptual ideas and systematic teamwork and exchange from the pastors responsible for confirmation education (cf. 7). However, a greater future cooperation between youth work and confirmation education should not mean that the latter can now replace the former. Rather, the aim is to tie temporary confirmation education into a broader youth work that exists before, during and after this period in the youths’ lives. Offers for 11- to 13-year-olds can become preparatory to confirmation classes while the classes themselves should look to the possibilities for the 14-18 age group as a meaningful continuation. Volunteers in confirmation classes could, for example, increasingly take part in these to continue ac- companying their confirmands in other projects.
11. New forms of intergenerational encounters within the parish at large and confirmation education in particular should challenge and broaden the horizons of young people.
This thesis again addresses youth work, but also the broader context of living and learning intergenerationally in a parish. Parents and their adolescent children should be invited together after confirma- tion to experience and explore together in the course of a project, weekend or holiday retreat the forms in which faith can be lived in the family, neighbourhood, school or parish. We are studying the organisational forms and practices of the free evangelical Churches and Christian movements to better understand the spiritual poten- tial of their closer and socially tight-knit, more human-scale forms of encounter for an established Church. The Church is undergoing a grassroots renewal at the hands of committed, imaginative, inven-
tive Christians driven by the joyful experience of their faith who seek new forms of intergenerational encounters and coexistence be- yond the traditional, institutional form of the parish Church.
12. In conclusion: confirmation education must integrate several differ- ent aspects of parish life.
Confirmation education must bring together the questions,
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doubts, and discoveries of its young charges with the necessarily alienating, provocative and liberating experiences and insights of