CONFIRMATION

Every two years we host a Confirmation Service at St. Lawrence’s usually led by the Bishop of Stafford, sometimes the Bishop of Lichfield. We regularly ask people to consider being confirmed. So what is confirmation?

In the Church of England confirmation offers a teenager or adult the opportunity to publicly “confirm” their faith in Jesus. Often (‘tho’ not always) those being confirmed will have been baptised as an infant. Then, their parents will have prayed that as their child grows he or she will “in due course come to confirmation when they can declare their faith for themselves.” So if you were baptised as an infant but have not been confirmed, then perhaps now you might consider it. It’s offered to you as a way of publicly owning Christian faith for yourself, and declaring you want take your own place as part of God’s church.

Alternatively you may never have been baptised. In which case the Confirmation Service offers you the opportunity to be baptised and confirmed in the same service. Jesus taught his followers to baptise those coming to faith as an external sign of their inner commitment to him. The assumption of the Bible is that all Christian believers are baptised.

But there are other reasons that might lead you to consider confirmation. Sometimes people who have grown up in another Christian denomination choose to be confirmed as a way of “joining” the Church of England.

Or perhaps you were actually confirmed many years ago, but feel that recently your faith has come alive in a new way and you want to say this publically. You can’t be confirmed again, but you can reaffirm your baptism vows in the confirmation service.

If you have been prompted to think about confirmation and would like to explore the possibility further, please get in touch with the Vicar Martin, via the Church Office.