After dinner, the Pastor stood up, and upon welcoming all the students and parents, gave a glowing recap of the year he and the students had spent together preparing for the Confirmation. The students all seemed to agree.

Then, he asked the assembled parents and grandparents if any of them would like to share their experiences of Confirmation from so many years back.

Silence.

Most of the gathered adults got that "deer in the headlights" look, as if they were stunned by the question and didn’t know which way to run to escape the answers. The Pastor should have left it at that.

He didn’t.

He gently asked one of the mothers to share her thoughts. She said that all she remembers about her Confirmation was that the instructor was a bitter, legalistic man who spent most of his time berating his students. She remembers begging her parents to not make her attend the program in order to avoid the teacher’s sarcasm and loathing for teens. She said it finally took the intervention of several parents to get the volunteer teacher replaced. She finished by saying that by that time it was too late, as most of her classmates had already made the decision that being Confirmed into any denomination would be a waste of their time.

Ouch. I heard someone behind her say, "Yuck." I thought, "Aren’t you glad you asked, Pastor?"

What are people going to say about you in ten, fifteen or twenty years? No matter what your role is: teacher, volunteer, principal, music minister, dancer, or janitor- what will people remember about their encounters with you? Will they walk away having seen Jesus shining through in your words or deeds, or will someone many years from now not remember your faith but your "yuck?"