[AI translation] A congregation usually becomes aware that it has a confirming youth when it sees the army of young people dressed in their festive clothes on the day after Pentecost. We may then be moved by the festive decorations and the sight of devout youth, but then we soon come to terms with the familiar fact that, lo and behold, the confirmation of forty or fifty children has happened again. But how, after what preparations, those children came to this point, and where they will be after the beautiful ceremony, is something that a congregation is not used to worrying about. Well, that's not right! We have brought them up now so that the whole church congregation can see them and embrace them in spirit. Look at them: here sits among us a part, a group of the future congregation, of the next generation of Hungarian Reformed Christians. Soon they will join us, our ranks, and they will come with us to the table.Among them must come the future presbyters of this congregation, perhaps also the pastor, the workers of the congregation, the fathers and mothers who will teach the generations to come how to pray and sing psalms. Our beautiful psalms will either continue to sing on their lips, or fall silent altogether. Our Reformed faith will either live on in their hearts or die out altogether. Our empty places after our death will be taken either by our children or by no one. The life of this congregation will either continue in them, or it will slowly fade away and cease. Do we adults feel how indifferent it is that we have here in our congregation an army of young people preparing for confirmation, the promise, the hope, the possibility of the future Hungarian Reformed Church? Do we sense that the preparation of our youth for confirmation is not a private matter for a few children and their instructors, but a common matter, a question of existence for the whole congregation? Do we feel that we are all responsible for the coming to a living faith of this army of young people, for their integration into our congregation or their disappearance into the world?
Our Word says: "In whom the whole building, being laid in order, groweth up into a holy temple in the Lord; in whom ye also are built together for a tabernacle of God by the Spirit." What this means is that the youth of this congregation are not a separate body, growing or not growing into a holy church in the Lord by themselves, but are an integral part of the adult congregation. They are not strangers and aliens, but our fellow citizens in heaven, and a house-wife of God, a most important part of the body of our church. Together, young and old form a unified building that makes up the invisible church. And one of the main laws of this building up into a spiritual temple, according to the Word, is that the whole congregation: youth and adult congregation, should grow together, be built up together into a spiritual house, a dwelling place of God by the Holy Spirit! In other words, this means that this youth must be built into the building of the church itself, not by the pastor who confirms it. The preparation of the confirmation of our youth is a common concern, a sacred task, a most sacred responsibility of the whole congregation, for which we must give an account before the Lord of the Church!
Confirmation education in special classes is only one factor in this preparation. I could almost say that this is the most difficult part of pastoral ministry. Because what is it all about? It is about sowing the seeds of a future life of faith! Our Word speaks of building on the foundation stone of the apostles and prophets, the cornerstone being Jesus Christ himself. Confirmation preparation is that precious special time of grace, given by God, when a young soul can be placed on the foundation of the apostles and prophets and be attached for life to the cornerstone, the Lord Jesus. Confirmation education is the place where a young soul is to encounter the Lord his Saviour in such a way that this encounter becomes final and decisive for the rest of his life. A great introduction must take place: we introduce the crucified and risen Christ to the child, and the child to the Lord Jesus! We introduce him to the beauty and richness of the redemption that Christ has brought, we place him before the reality of grace, and then we entrust him with the decision. Alas, so few of us take seriously that life or death for our child depends on this decision! Soon after Confirmation, our children go out into the world, scattered, for many of them this is the last time the church can reach out to them and provide for their education. So we must prepare them to take with them that one thing which will be so indispensable to them in life and in death!
Do you know that there is already a terrible struggle for the souls of your children? And yet they are protected by home and school. But it is through the cracks in the crumbling walls of home and school that the world, with its temptations, temptations, obstacles and compulsions, is seeping in and surrounding them. I deal with your children, and in talking with them I often see so clearly the subtle, hard-to-detect means Satan uses to disrupt the seriousness and depth of their confirmation preparations. Yet this time is a never to return, a once-in-a-lifetime occasion in the lives of our children. Now the young soul is still before us. He is living the most difficult time of his adolescence. His first encounters with real life are behind him, and he is searching for a way forward in life. And it is precisely at this time of development and search that Confirmation education takes place. What a great thing it is that at this time we can and must tell him what alone gives his life purpose and meaning, what alone can save his life from death, eternal death. If we do not tell him now in such a way that he understands and accepts it, who will care about the whole matter later? If we do not give him the lamp of the gospel now, will he not stumble and wander in the dark all his life? Do you realize what a deadly important and responsible service this is for the church to render to its adolescent youth? I say ministry to the congregation deliberately, because pastor-led education is only one factor in the preparation for confirmation. Another is the helpful involvement of parents, also as church members, that is, what the child sees and hears at home. Through Confirmation we want to involve our children, to integrate them into the community of the church. But can we expect this endeavour to be successful if the parents themselves have not already been integrated into the church community? How can a child's emerging faith be consolidated if he hears and sees something different from his parents at home than he did at confirmation? All that we teach them about faith, about the beauty and joy of the Christian life, will remain just a curriculum for them if they do not see a living example of it at home in your life.
Can we expect good results from any serious education if it is not followed up with illustrative teaching in the home? It is vain for us to try, with much effort and prayer, to bring a child's soul to the cornerstone, the Lord Jesus, if he does not see at home in the home how the building up of a life on Christ is done in practice! How can we expect young people to participate joyfully in the preaching of the Word and the hearing of the Word if the father or mother rarely, if ever, attends? Can you parents imagine how difficult it is for a child to learn to pray and live the Bible if he never sees it from you? I've had confirmation daughters who were very gripped by the Spirit of the Lord during their time of preparation. She was so touched with devotion to the things of the Lord, and we saw her spiritual growth with so much hope! Even after her Confirmation, she always sat here for a few months, listening to the preaching with sparkling eyes. He was in great pain that his parents would never come with him. Now he is not so old either, the Holy Spirit has been quenched in his heart by his parents' indifference!
Dear Parent Brother! If you care whether your child will become a believer or a non-believer - and it does matter, doesn't it? - then especially now, in this time of grace of preparation, take very seriously to heart what God is asking you to do here before your child: 'Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your strength. And these promises which I command you this day shall be in your heart. And thou shalt exercise thy sons in these things, and shalt speak of them when thou sittest in thy house, or when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up. And thou shalt bind them upon thy hand, and they shall be a forehead between thine eyes. And thou shalt write them on the doorposts of thy house, and on thy gates." (Deuteronomy 6:5-9) Then your child's life will be built on the surest foundation, Christ, if he can be built on it with you, if you are built together into the tabernacle of God by the Spirit!
And finally, the whole church must be an active factor in the preparation of our youth for confirmation. Growing young people need to be incorporated into the adult congregation. And here is the responsibility of the congregation to its youth! If the congregation cannot fulfil this responsibility, if our young brothers and sisters do not remain among us after the confirmation ceremony, but are scattered away from the body of the congregation, who will follow them? Will they ever find their way back to the church? Yes, this congregation must do all it can now not to block the way to the church for its youth, but to smooth it, to make it desirable.
The Church is facing difficult times in a world which looks down on the Church, despises it, condemns it as backward and distrusts it. The world recognises that the ideal of the Church is noble, its message is welcome, its purpose is lofty, its founder was the noblest person this earth has ever known, but the world also knows and condemns that the Church very often does not live in a way that is consistent with the lofty ideals it proclaims. Our youth are also becoming increasingly aware of this criticism of the Church by the world. And they are also beginning to see that the errors of which the Church is accused are real.
Then let us not forget that our youth are disillusioned and disillusioned with adults anyway. It is distrustful of adult affairs, and unfortunately there is good reason for this. All the greater, therefore, is our responsibility towards them! What kind of presbyters do our sons become when they see empty presbytery rows in church on Sundays? How will they love this church if they do not feel the love and care of the congregation for them now? What kind of congregational community will they be part of if we adults are not in a blessed, warm, brotherly community of love with one another? Our greatest, common congregational responsibility to our youth is to live out the communion of saints to them in such an attractive way that they long to be part of it. Can this congregation assume this sacred responsibility for its youth?!
And one more thing: in all that we have been talking about, the main factor at work is God the Holy Spirit. He alone can build this congregation, together with its youth and its older generation, on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, into a spiritual house, a holy temple in the Lord. But He will not do this building without us! The least we can do to contribute to the Holy Spirit's church-building work is to pray very earnestly for it! That's what I do! I encourage our confirmands to do the same in every class. Now I also ask parents and the whole congregation: to carry in your regular prayers the confirmation education of our youth, their coming to a living faith and their incorporation into the congregation! Let us pray very earnestly and very often that old and young, all of us together, may be built up together into the tabernacle of God by the Spirit! He can and will do it, if we ask with an awareness of our responsibility!
Amen
Date: 29 February 1948.
Lesson
5Móz 6,1-9