Confirmation: Mentors & Companions for the Journey

Dear friends and members of St. Matt's,

Confirmation is coming! After taking a year off due to the pandemic, wanting our kids to have the opportunity to be in person and visit other houses of worship, we're excited to welcome 8th and 9th grades to the journey of Confirmation this year. Families that are interested in Confirmation can reach out directly to Samantha for more information. While the Confirmation journey is a big commitment, we commend it to you as an important journey for your child as they grow into more mature people of faith.

One piece of the Confirmation journey that has been an important part of life at St. Matt's is the special place of Confirmation Mentors. For years, Mentors have played a special role in the journey - and in many cases, have created and then nurtured long lasting relationships as their Confirmand grows into an older and more faithful person. We love to see those relationships flourish and for them to continue over the years through graduation and beyond. And we'd like to invite you to consider serving as a Confirmation Mentor. If you've never considered it before, here's what that means.

Confirmation Mentors are active members of our congregation. That means they participate broadly in the life of the congregation. They attend worship on a regular basis. They (along with their family in some cases) make a financial pledge to support our life, ministries, staff, and programming. They participate in some other aspect of our life - the choir, a committee, the Vestry, a mission project, etc. Mentors don't have to know everything about God - none of us do! They just need to have a reverence and a curiosity for God, a willingness to be on a faith journey, and to acknowledge that we are all continuing to grow. It's important that the Mentor is willing to be honest about their own faith - including their own challenges. None of us have all the answers, have seen God face to face, or are perfect like Jesus. The most important part of being a Mentor is your commitment to being present and your willingness to be both honest and curious. Often Mentors tell us how much they learn from the Mentees - so this is not a one way relationship!

Mentors join Confirmands for several of our meetings throughout they year. Sometimes they meet each other at other times to share a meal or work on a project. The goal of this relationship is really to help the Confirmand begin to see themselves as an adult member of our community at St. Matt's. And to do that, it's important that they begin to make friends and have relationships with adults to whom they aren't related - someone who cares for them and comes to know them outside the family unit. We know from so much research and literature that this consistently makes a difference in the faith of a young person, in their mental health, and in their development towards adulthood.

Being a Mentor is not a heavy commitment of time. But it is a commitment of intention, energy, and prayer. Having said that, any mentor you talk to will tell you that this is an incredibly rewarding opportunity, and traveling this road with our brilliant, kind, wonderful young people is a gift that strengthens their faith as well.

If you're interested in serving as a Confirmation Mentor this year, please be in touch with Samantha for more information. All Safe Church policies will be followed in order to protect our kids, so if you've not been a Mentor or worked with kids before, make sure to ask Samantha about what else needs to be done. And I'd ask you all, our whole congregation, to pray for our Confirmands as they begin this journey in the next few weeks. Thank you for your continued support of our Confirmation program - we're looking forward to a great year!

Faithfully,

--Marissa +