Attended a lovely confirmation service, at which the four grand-daughters of a singing friend, and several other people I knew, were confirmed by the Bishop of St Asaph. It was one of the best confirmation services I've attended, and I've been to a fair few. A good sermon, a service well planned to work within the church (Holy Trinity, Penrhos) in which it was held, and a real and welcome sense of a church family in good heart, with a real desire to serve and to witness. We can be seduced into believing all is gloom and doom within a fading and failing Anglican church, but that was not at all how it felt today.
Of course, the commitment to active discipleship of those attending will have varied enormously. I'm sure there were a few folk in that congregation for whom this was their first church visit for a while. But I'm also sure that all of them will have felt something of what I felt, a sense of hope and purpose and of the saving love of God for us, expressed in baptism and in holy communion, expressed in those things that bring us to the foot of the cross, there to discover that (in words used by the bishop at the point of confirmation) God claims us as his own.
(The sketch of Penrhos Church was made by an old friend of mine, Simon Harrison)
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