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Delving into The Confirmation Project’s Qualitative Research: Executive Summary

We’re beginning to delve into the findings from The Confirmation Project’s qualitative research. We’ll begin by sharing the executive summary from that research. We hope it will pique your interest and that you’ll stay tuned for further posts on these findings!

Executive Summary

Twenty-four ministries were studied as part of the qualitative research for The Confirmation Project, a project funded by the Lilly Foundation to examine confirmation and equivalent practices across five denominations with the goal of strengthening discipleship formation for youth. The five denominations involved, Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, African Methodist Episcopal, United Methodist Church, Presbyterian Church USA, and Episcopal, all practiced infant baptism. Strengthening discipleship was understood as nurturing faith in Jesus Christ and facilitating youth encounters with Christian traditions (Scripture, creeds, confessions, and practices) to support lifelong Christian vocation. The hope of this research was to be a catalyst for practitioners and ministry leaders to reimagine confirmation by offering new theological thinking and effective approaches that take into account contemporary and contextual challenges. As part of a mixed methods research design, the qualitative research is uniquely positioned to illustrate and examine the many ways youth confirmation is understood and practiced by discovering themes, stories, and practices of confirmation ministry within and across these denominations.

Portraits were crafted for each ministry studied as
a way of telling the story of confirmation practice in that context and to better understand its contribution to youth discipleship. (Full portraits of each site are available here.)

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