Affirmation of Baptism 2019
Alison, Lukas, Maddie, Madeline, Veronica

Confirmands’ statement of faith 

Through our years of confirmation classes, and involvement at church, in preparation for becoming adult members of the church, we have tried to do some of the things that adult church members do.

Here are some of those things:

-Worship regularly, and offer our time and talents to the church.

Most of the time we worshiped with our families, but we also served as worship assistants, musicians, nursery attendants, acolytes and ushers. We have learned about prayer, and practiced praying, within this community of faith.

We took part in many Christmas programs and holiday worship services.

We spent many happy days with our family and friends at Camp Calumet in New Hampshire.

-Learn about our faith to better understand scripture and tradition.

We wish to thank our faith formation teachers, Mrs. Canning and Ms. Borkowski, and our classmates who learned with us. Mrs. Canning and Ms. Borkowski, would you please stand?

Through Sunday morning faith formation classes, we learned about the Bible.
We remember many lessons and projects from those classes. Here are a few:

-offering boxes we made, which reminded us to give to others.

-prayer crosses, which gave us a visual reminder of the importance of prayer

-locusts made of Twix Bars

-the chair

-and many other projects and activities

In our confirmation classes we talked about our lives outside of church. We told how school was going and talked about our after-school activities. We shared some of our personal hopes and dreams for the future.

We learned to pronounce the names of the books of the Bible and we practiced finding passages in the Bible.

We explored Bible history and discussed the meaning of the Bible passages we read.

We planted and weeded the congregation’s gardens and helped harvest vegetables for A Place to Turn in Natick.

With the help of our parents, we built an arbor out of branches from the woods around the church. Later this morning we will walk out to the garden, and dedicate it as a sign of our commitment to working together, and to stewardship of the world around us. Thank you to Mrs. Smoot for directing our work on the garden.

-Serve other people.

We have worked with members of Peace, and with people from the community, to welcome homeless families into our church, through Family Promise. At the end of each Family Promise host week, we washed the blankets and sheets. This is not something that we would normally think of doing, but it was fun, especially eating lunch together while the clothes were in the wash.

We collected food for A Place to Turn in Natick, and helped deliver it.

-Care for other church members

We try to be aware of health needs of other members and provide assistance as we are able. When members of the church face a loss, we try to support them in some way.

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When we were baptized, our parents and sponsors promised to bring us to church and provide for our instruction in the Christian faith, to teach us the Lord’s Prayer, the Ten Commandments, and the Creed.

They fulfilled their promises, and we thank them.

Throughout our years of learning, we studied Luther’s Small Catechism, and talked about the Ten Commandments, the Apostles’ Creed, and the Lord’s Prayer.

We understand that these are the essential elements of the Christian faith. If we do not have all of them in our memories, at least we have studied them and talked about them many times, so that we might return to them, and meditate on them throughout our lives.

Parents, will you please stand?

We thank you, our parents and our brothers and sisters…

…for taking us to church, and for worshiping with us.

…for taking us to faith-formation classes and confirmation classes.

…for helping us with sermon report forms.

…for encouraging us, and helping us through our confirmation program.

…for working on the garden and the arbor with us.

…for showing us what it means to love God and love our neighbors

We thank the other members and friends of this congregation…

…for maintaining the ministry through your involvement and financial support

…for providing a place where young people can learn and grow in faith

…for caring about the spiritual and ethical training of young people in our communities

Thank you all, for your prayers, for your support, and for your presence here this morning, as the five of us affirm our baptisms and become adult members of the church.