Becoming a Christian is two-step process. The first step is baptism. Regardless of what kind of baptism you believe in or have experienced, baptism is entry into the Christian faith. And when you first enter you are in the entryway. In the church we call it the narthex. It’s the room just inside the front doors. So baptism brings new converts into the narthex. They are in the church, but they are not yet in congregation or the assembly, where people are seated.
Baptism is an initiation, a rite of passage from one’s old life to new life in Christ. Baptism marks one’s new birth in Christ. So once a person is baptized, they are then an infant in Christ. Infants are full human beings with all of the rights and privileges pertaining thereunto. Infants are beautiful, and should be loved and respected, but they are ignorant. Like infants, newly baptized people need to learn to speak the language. And Christianity has its own unique vocabulary. Bible words and ideas and church words and ideas are not used in secular society. Or they are not used or understood correctly—biblically.
And this leads to the second step involved in becoming a Christian. Confirmation is the long neglected church rite or ritual through which baptized people are received into church membership. They are welcomed into the congregation or assembly—the local group of Christians—as practicing members of the group.
Most of the old Mainline churches used to do confirmation for their baptized children. And prior to the rite of confirmation, the children did not receive communion and could not vote in church matters. The rite of Confirmation was the culmination of a teaching process, a year or two of formal study of the Bible and Christianity with the pastor or an elder. At the conclusion of their study, confirmands would stand before the elders or the church and answer questions that indicated that they had learned some Christian vocabulary and that they personally wanted to continue the process of being a Christian by joining the local church. …
