Confirmation

Up to date information about the Confirmation Journey can be found on this page, including schedules, resources, & reflections. If you’re interested in Confirmation for the 2024-2025 year, please send an email to Rev. Tommy!

At St. Matt’s, Confirmation is a journey. Confirmands (someone seeking Confirmation) spend a year learning about the Christian faith, the Episcopal Church, and the world around them. We want our kids to know and understand our particular tradition, and to be able to respond in love with their words and actions. We also want them to be confident in God’s love for them, our love for them, and to know that they belong at St. Matt’s. This means we keep a careful eye on the pressures and anxiety they face in school and at sports, and we want to create a space for them where they can ask questions and explore. To help, Confirmands are matched with Mentors from within our community, to help them start to make the leap into our community of faithful adults. Confirmands participate in worship by learning to Lector and they have many opportunities for formation, fellowship, and service. It is a time when the confirmands reaffirm the promises that were made for them when they were baptized and receive the laying on of hands by the Bishop.

Typically, Confirmands are in eighth grade, but this year we have combined 8th and 9th grade. It’s perfectly fine for someone to wait if they aren’t ready. At the end of the year, it’s very important to us that Confirmands make their own decision about whether or not they are ready to be confirmed. Are they ready to spend their life following after Jesus? Following the Way of Love?

Confirmation – October 2023

Our first Confirmation gathering will be this Sunday, October 1st and 11:30am after church. Parents and kids are invited for a time of information and conversation. We will wrap up …

Children & Youth Sept 2023

Church School kicked off this past week! We’ll have church school on the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and (when there is a) 5th Sunday of the month. For a while, we’ll …

The Rev. Dr. Tommy Watson, Deacon

Assistant to the Rector for Formation & Engagement
(203) 762-7400

The Rev. Dr. Tommy Watson, Jr. began serving at St. Matthew’s in August of 2024.

I am a native of Leesville, SC. My bachelors, masters, and doctoral degrees are all in Vocal Performance, and I have a post Doctoral Certificate in Contemporary Commercial Vocal Pedagogy. Prior to my call to ordained ministry in 2019, I taught at the collegiate level for five years. Additionally, I was a tenured Associate Professor of Music at the South Carolina School of the Arts at Anderson University for twenty years. I founded and directed the Opera Workshop there, taught classical and non-classical voice lessons, Vocal Pedagogy, Western Music History, World Musics History, Music Theory, Lyric Diction for Singers, vocal coached musicals, and taught Aesthetics. Concurrently, I sang professionally as a classical baritone/bass soloist, directed music at churches, and did mission work in West Africa and India while employed at AU. After resigning my tenured post in May 2021, my studies at Berkeley Divinity School at Yale began that August.

Upon graduating from Berkeley in May 2024, and being ordained a Deacon two weeks later, I actively discerned where Almighty God would call me next. After having applied for clergy positions across the country, including St. Matt’s, progressively, it became clear that I just might be called here. After having met with Marissa, Nancy, Pam, and Anne, and they having shared their vision, hopes, and dreams for St. Matt’s, the sum of those conversations helped me to discern that I was indeed being called here; to share in the faithful aspirations of people who love their parish community. After much discernment on our collective parts, I have been formally called by the Rector, with the Vestry and Bishop concurring, to St. Matt’s. I couldn’t be happier! I look forward to getting to know all of you, praying and worshipping with you, assisting with the sacraments, working with the children and their families, getting acquainted with people in Wilton, and to discern with you how Almighty God is calling us to participate in the reconciliatory mission of God’s redeeming love in the world.

Confirmation – October 2023

Children & Youth Sept 2023

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