Confirmation

Had the confirmation of four of our youth today. They were a good group. Here are a couple of pictures:

The official photo after church.

The selfie.  :-)

Now onto to Higher Things Te Deum in Grand Rapids, Michigan! Leaving at 6:30 am!

Warming Your Pastor's Heart

In confirmation class with people, I tell them point blank, straight up, when we study the Ten Commandments: "I am trying to crush your self esteem." (If you don't think this is the purpose of the Ten Commandments, see Romans 3:19-20.) For their self-esteem should not come from themselves or what they do, but from Christ and the fact that He died for them. That makes them worth far more than anything they could ever do! I tell them this so much, in fact, that they begin to joke about it. But the point is made, and they get it.

So, one of the young ladies in my confirmation class found a self-esteem exercise for girls on the web. As you can see from the picture (sorry the scan didn't turn out better, but if you click on the picture you can view a larger image of it) you're supposed to write inside the letters "ME" what makes you special.

So, she writes at the bottom right "Turn for the truth ->" and on the next page instead is the following (notice in small print above the letter "M" the word "Law" and above the letter "E" the word "Gospel"):

Awesome. I did not ask her to do this. She just brought it in one day. Warms a pastors heart! :-)

What Warms a Pastor's Heart . . .

. . . is when you receive a phone call from a catechumen from your previous church whom you confirmed 13 years ago (and haven't heard from since, since we now live a distance away) who tells you she is getting married and was thinking about you and all that you did for her, who still remembers her catechism, how much effort was put into her, how much you cared, what a rough stretch in her life that was, and how she would not be the person she is today without that. Makes it all worth it. That one will get me through a lot. :-)

Confirmation

Today was the confirmation of my second child and first daughter, Sarah. Whenever you have a confirmation, I highly recommend singing the hymn "God's Own Child I Gladly Say It: I am Baptized into Christ." We sang this as our opening hymn today and it definitely set the emphasis for the day in the right place - not on what Sarah has done, but on what Jesus has done, and continues to do, for her. Click here to read the sermon, in which I used this hymn. (And in case you're wondering . . . no, we do not project stuff on the screen behind us in the Divine Service! We're stuck with that there in the building that we rent.)