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So I gave them a genuine question-and-answer exam, seeking the doctrines now in their own words, from their own mouths.

But by now they did not see me as the cruel taskmaster. I was their helper! I, together with their sponsors, worked and worked the material into their hearts by saying: "We won't let you fail in front of so many people. We are on your side. You will strike them with astonishment by your great learning!" I became the managing coach. Their chosen sponsors worked individually with each. We made confirmation day into something like the final game of a long season.

And when the confirmands had succeeded in their answers, when all teaching and all questioning were finally at an end, the adults who loved and honored the children burst into a jamboree of laughter and applause. Always! Every year they whistled and stomped, though in each new year the applause was completely spontaneous and offered to that year's group alone. (Only once in all the rest of my tenure at Grace, from 1974 to the late '80s, did a student not pass.)

On Pentecost Sunday itself, the final act of confirmation took place before the entire congregation.

"You are my child," the Lord had said, and made it true in the saying. Now that child, having come to understand the meaning of so celestial an adoption, declared before the witness of the whole church, but unto none but Jesus himself, "And you are my Lord!"

Walter Wangerin Jr. teaches English at Valparaiso University. This essay is adapted from his book This Earthly Pilgrimage (Zondervan, 2003) and reprinted with permission.

Copyright © 2004 Christianity Today.Click for reprint information.

This Earthly Pilgrimage is available from Christianbook.com and other book retailers.

Also posted today is an interview with Walter Wangerin.

Wangerin's articles for CT include:

Small Beneath the Firmament | For my father-in-law, his place in the order of Creation was no diminishment, but the beginning of wisdom. (March 2, 2001)

Maundy Thursday | Part one of "The Great Reversal," a CT Classic article (April 20, 2000)

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February 2004, Vol. 48, No. 2