Confirmation is one of my favorite parts of youth ministry. It’s a season in the life of a teenager when meaningful relationship-building and meaningful theological exploration happen at the same time. In my experience, it is some of the best work we get to do in walking alongside students.
When Confirmation is working well, it lays a strong foundation for what the church can be in a teenager’s life: a community that invests in them relationally while also inviting them to explore the depths of who God is, who God created them to be, and how they are called to live that out.
But in my years in youth ministry, one thing has consistently gotten in the way of that vision: the tools.
The curricula and resources available to youth ministers often fall short of helping students explore what they actually want to explore. Teenagers bring big, curious, sometimes uncomfortable questions of faith with real enthusiasm when they are given the space to ask them. But instead of creating that space and equipping students with a way to ask faithful questions, we often hand them a curriculum built around denominational history and doctrinal checklists.
That content has its place. Denominational distinctives matter, and we recognize that. That is why we have included denominational commentary in each lesson, complementing the broader exploration of Christian life at the heart of this curriculum. But when Confirmation becomes mostly about covering information, we miss the larger opportunity this season offers.
If Confirmation’s primary goal is for teenagers to learn their denomination’s founding documents and theological distinctives, we are missing the chance to lay a foundation for a faith that can actually grow with them throughout life. What if we used this time, and the cultural weight Confirmation still carries, to walk alongside young people as they wrestle with what it genuinely means to live a Christian life in all its complexity?
What would it look like to hand them not just information about faith, but the tools of faith itself: practices, questions, community, and the deep understanding that through all of life’s complexity and mess, God is with them? That is a foundation worth building. And Confirmation might be exactly the right moment to build it.
“Confirmation might be exactly the right moment to hand students not just information about faith, but the tools of faith itself.”
We created the Holy Disruptions Confirmation curriculum with all of that in mind. When we began developing it, we sought feedback from youth ministers, pastors, and volunteers who were actively leading students through Confirmation. We asked a simple question: How could we make Confirmation better?
What we heard shaped everything. We gathered youth ministry practitioners from across the mainline spectrum to help craft a curriculum they would be excited to use with their students. Through that process, we held firm to one core conviction: Confirmation is, at its heart, an outpouring of the promises made by God and by us at baptism.
“Confirmation is, at its heart, an outpouring of the promises made by God and by us at baptism.”
That conviction became our guiding principle. Rather than designing a curriculum around content to be covered, we designed one around a deeper commitment: to help young people understand the depth of their baptismal vows and live them out in meaningful ways. We wanted students to know that God’s love is expansive beyond what we can fully measure or contain, that God has been with them from the very beginning, and that God is present through the highs and lows of their lives.
We also wanted students to understand that God calls them to be co-creators in the kin-dom of God, not someday, but now, in their everyday lives and in the world that is still being made.
Holy Disruptions Confirmation is rooted in the Sermon on the Mount as a moral guide for Christian life. Christ’s teachings are not presented as a list of rules to memorize, but as a living framework for how to move through the world. Christ models a life filled with humility, compassion, and the kind of radical love that takes seriously both who we are and who we are called to become.
That foundation, combined with the Holy Disruptions Theological Reflection Method, gives students the tools and space to practice asking the questions that actually matter in a life of faith. Not only the questions with easy answers, but the real ones young people are already carrying, often without anyone having given them permission to ask.
Holy Disruptions creates that permission. Then it walks with students through what they find with grace, curiosity, and community.
Imagine a Confirmation experience where students leave not just knowing more, but understanding that God has been and will be a present and active participant in their lives and in the world. What if the measure of a meaningful Confirmation experience was not how well students could recite a creed, but how equipped they felt to carry their faith into a Monday morning, a hard conversation, a moment of joy, a season of doubt, or a decision that actually matters to them?
When we center transformation over information, Confirmation stops being a box to check. It becomes a first real taste of what the Church can be at its best: a community of faith that helps young people discover who they are, who God is, and how they are called to participate in God’s work in the world.
“When we center transformation over information, Confirmation stops being a box to check.”
Students do not simply walk away with a certificate that marks the end of something. They walk away with an expansive vision of Christian life, questions worth keeping, and the deep-down knowledge that they are loved, called to help make the world look more like heaven, and never alone.
To us, that is a foundation worth building.
If you’re interested in tools to build that type of foundation through Confirmation, check out Holy Disruptions Confirmation today! From now through May 31st, pre-order Confirmation to save 20 percent. Bundle with our Holy Disruptions Volume 3 curriculum with code HDBUNDLE2026 to save another $50 off. Both products release Jul 21, 2026.
About the Author—Becca brings 15+ years of experience in children’s, youth, and adult ministry. A graduate of MLC, she holds an MA in Youth Ministry from Memphis Theological Seminary. Becca has led ministries, written curriculum, and facilitated small groups in small, mid-size, and large UMC churches across the Southeast. She’s passionate about creating the tools for youth workers to be in meaningful ministry.
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