- Apr 30, 2013
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This January I will be joining First United Church of Christ of Orlando, Florida. So I'll probably be the only member of the UCC on this forum.
I'm glad you've found a good church home!
Sorry about the conservative Episcopalians in your area! But I'm glad the UCC is there for you. And the spirit of each individual congregation makes a lot of difference. I hope this congregation will be a place that nurtures and welcomes you.
I was finally received into our local congregation yesterday.
I don't really approve of the ceremony. When I belonged to a Lutheran church, it was a far shorter ceremony just based on a confession of faith. This felt more like a confirmation rite.
I do understand where you are coming from. Without disagreeing with you or indeed expressing an opinion on the issue one way or the other, for I no longer really have one, I can offer this explanation: it tends to be the case that in most Congregational churches, including UCC churches, at least when I worked for them, the actual voting members represent what is in many cases only small subset of the congregation, with membership being optional in terms of partaking of the Eucharist, and many other aspects of church life, and entailing additional responsibilities, so when someone new makes the commitment to formally join as an actual member, it is kind of a big deal, which does bear some liturgical similarity to Confirmation or the Orthodox service of Chrismation.
TBH, I debated putting the whole thing off, but I decided to go through it anyways.
I have had a rough couple of past weeks. Getting over a lingering case of COVID, and a fibromyalgia relapse has been tough. Life is hard enough, I don't expect an "interrogation" about my beliefs out of that sort of a religious environment, particularly one that seems to have such loose doctrinal commitments in general. To use a Lutheran expression, there was alot of Law and very little Gospel. And TBH, I don't think in an ideal world, the UCC would be my first choice. So I have mixed feelings about the whole thing, really.
Well in the two Congregational missions I set up a few years ago, we did not implement such a service, for a number of reasons including a desire to avoid setting up anything that might discourage participation by the highly marginalized people one of the two missions serves.
Also I don’t think Park Street Church in Boston does anything with the quality of a confirmation when new members join.
As a matter of personal preference, I don’t like the Western style of confirmation liturgies which are intended as adolescent rites of passage and require memorization of the Creed and the Catechism, and in some denominations involve a diocesan Bishop or District Superintendent testing the young people on their knowledge as part of the liturgy. While some ardent teenage Christians might well enjoy that, in the same way some actively try out for and compete in the Academic Decathlon or other forms of testing themselves, others might find it a stumbling block; I have encountered too many Western Christians who lost interest in the faith at least for a number of years as a result of having to go through that type of service in their adolescence.
Thus I implemented Chrismation based on the Orthodox liturgy which follows immediately the baptism of anyone, and this allows any energy of youth who want to test themselves religiously to be directed to the benefit of the entire congregation through altar and choir service.