All Saints’ Westboro took a fresh look at confirmation and is trying something new. The Living Faith Together passport is a newly created resource and can also be used in other Christian education contexts.
Janet Currie-Kelk, All Saints’ children and youth ministry leader, told Perspective that it was difficult to organize a traditional confirmation program that accommodated kids’ busy schedules of school and extra-curricular sports and activities. “It would be so much nicer to have a longer time frame for young people and have more flexibility,” she recalls wishing.
“The biggest thing about confirmation is that the young people feel supported by their community of faith, and [recognize] that this isn’t a graduation. This is a start of a new journey, in the sense that they’re taking their own responsibility for their own faith development.”
Currie-Kelk had been reading a lot about intergenerational ministry that suggests that keeping children and youth programming separate from the rest of the community “isn’t necessarily in the best interest of anyone’s faith development.” She and the clergy team asked, “How could we offer something to these young people that surrounds them in the community and provide them with the knowledge, the skills, and the experiences of living one’s faith?”
One of the ways of doing that is giving them a confirmation partner or mentor, which All Saints’ does.
And they found a program with the flexibility they were looking for — the passport idea — from an Episcopalian church in the U.S., which has been working with the concept for about 10 years and even offers customized adaptations for different denominations.
They consulted with parishioner Patricia Bays, who has had a long involvement in Christian education and is the author of This Anglican Church of Ours, who was impressed, and so they decided to adapt it for the local context in the diocese of Ottawa.
The passport concept allows a user to prepare for confirmation or simply engage in Christian education programming at any age at their own pace. And it takes confirmation beyond books into experiential learning with lots of room for questioning and reflecting.
There are three broad categories of learning — Foundation, Spiritual Practice and Community in Action. All Saints’ held its first foundational session in the fall — a group discussion of the question “Is doubt okay?”, which drew about 25 people and included parishioners who weren’t involved in confirmation but were just interested in the topic There are four more sessions:
- What do you believe?
- Scripture Mad Dash
- One Church, Many Expressions
- Circle of the Church Year
They intend to hold these core sessions each year, so anyone who wasn’t able to attend won’t have to wait too long for the next one.
The passport includes room for the participants and make notes and record their reflections.
The Spiritual Practice category includes three core requirements:
- Anglican traditions
- Holy Week – (participants must join for at least one day)
- Attending worship service at All Saints’ Westboro at least once a month.
Then participants can choose three of these:
- Prayer and practice
- Praying with Psalms
- Indigenous Spiritualities
- Bible Story-telling
- World Religions
- Labyrinth Spiritual Practice
- Forest Church
- Humanics Santuary and Sculpture Park
- Sacred space
- Lectio Divina
- Vespers
- Crafting circle
Community in Action — How can we love and serve our neighbour?
- Holy Troublemaking
- Suffering — Where is God?
- The Ministry of the Rest of Us
- All Saints’ Westboro Community Space Volunteer
Currie-Kelk says this is a draw for the youth. They talk about Jesus as the ultimate Holy Troublemaker or an activist for Black rights such as Viola Desmond. These issues “tend to also have a very large impact on their faith development. So, faith isn’t just Sunday morning, it’s living it. Whether that’s helping in a food bank, or going on a mission project, or volunteering within other community events.”
Once participants have completed all the requirements, they can be confirmed.
The program is just launching, but Currie-Kelk says that the response so far has been enthusiastic. “We printed 50 passports to start with and we gave them all away.”
All Saints’ is happy to share the templates and their experiences with other parishes that are interested. Incumbent Archdeacon Kathryn Otley has shared information about the program with other diocesan clergy.
Above— Pages from the passport with room for notes and personal reflections.
L— Janet Currie-Kelk is All Saints’ children and youth ministry leader.
Cathedral Deanery — Wallis sketching Christ Church Cathedral West Window Cartoon