Our 2026 Confirmation journey is officially underway, and already our time together is being shaped by patient community-building, exploration, and service. This year’s class includes twelve students from across our Fox Valley United Methodist connection, with four of those confirmands coming from UMCG (Cameron, Ella, Katie, & Nate). Students bring with them different churches, schools, experiences, and perspectives and while that variety doesn’t instantly turn into easy conversation, it is becoming opportunity to learn one another’s names, stories, and begin building community. Part of our early work together is simply helping students feel comfortable enough to talk (sometimes with a little encouragement), listen well, laugh together, and begin to trust that this is a place where they (and their questions) belong.
We began our time together on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, grounding the start of confirmation not in a classroom, but in service. As a group, students, mentors, parents, and leaders prepared sack lunches and a hot meal for Lazarus House. There was chopping, packing, teamwork, and conversation as hands stayed busy and relationships slowly started to form. Beginning confirmation on MLK Day felt especially fitting as it was a reminder that following Jesus is inseparable from loving our neighbors, seeking justice, and showing up in tangible ways for the world God so loves.
This year, our confirmation class is using the Theotokos curriculum, which is designed not just to teach information, but to form disciples in community. The word Theotokos is an ancient Christian title for Mary, meaning “God-bearer.” It points to the truth that God chooses to work through human lives, ordinary people who carry God’s love into the world. For our confirmands, this name is an invitation to consider how they, too, are called to “bear God” into their schools, friendships, communities, and everyday lives.
Throughout our time together, we’ll seek to help confirmands explore their own story, faith, identity, and place of belonging within the United Methodist connection. Throughout the semester, students will share their stories with one another, learn about the history, doctrine, and polity of the United Methodist Church, and grow in their understanding of what it means to participate in a wider connection that stretches far beyond one congregation, exampled by our coming together within the Fox Valley for confirmation. The focus of the curriculum is intentionally more about process than content, seeking to build community, nurture trust, and help students live into connection: to themselves, to God, to the Church, to their neighbor, and to creation.
Action is also woven throughout this confirmation journey, not just an extra requirement, but as a core practice of discipleship. From the very beginning, our confirmands are invited to learn faith by living it: showing up, paying attention, working together, and discovering how God meets them in the world beyond the church walls. Throughout the semester we’ll put the things we’ve been learning together with action: for Midwest Mission, with a prayer retreat, worshipping with our Jewish siblings, just to name a few.
As this confirmation class continues, we invite you to hold these students, their mentors, and their grownups in prayer. Pray for curiosity that asks brave questions, for confidence to speak up and try new things, and for grace as they grow and learn. Pray that they would notice God already at work in their lives and that they would begin to trust that God can work through them, too. And pray for us as a church: that we support these young people by encouraging them as they grow in faith and participate in God’s work in the world.
We’re grateful for this class, for the wider Fox Valley connection, and for the Spirit who is already at work, sending us all into the world to serve, grow, and love as we seek to live and love like Jesus.
