Growing up, the confession in Lent felt like a saltine cracker. Bland, lacking heft, and a bit confusing.
It seemed like a placeholder, something routine, but not fully engaged. And, for some of the adults around me, it carried a lot of baggage, becoming something to be avoided as much as possible.
So if it occurred in the service at all (and we more frequently had confession in Lent), it was a paragraph of diluted theology. We rattled it off quickly and then left in the dust as we moved on to more meaningful and comfortable parts of the service, parts that rarely touched on the darkest, most difficult aspects of our lives.
A few years ago, though, I attended an evangelical megachurch for the first time. The entire service was uncharted territory for me.
But the craziest part? The pastor got up on stage and started talking about pornography addictions. He preached about it for 40 minutes.
My take away wasn’t guilt and shame. He just talked, matter-of-factly, about the devastating impact porn addictions can have on young boys and families, and offered spiritual and Scriptural advice on how to overcome it. And pointed people toward the addiction-recovery groups sponsored by the church.
In other words, he encouraged conversation and confession of a very insidious, prevalent issue.
I had never heard a mainline pastor come close to preaching on something as delicate as a porn addiction. In fact, I’d never heard a sermon focused on divorce, adultery, domestic violence, or any other kind of addiction at all. Those deepest, darkest secrets remained just that—secrets.
Yet I knew that these things touched deeply on the lives of congregants in every denomination. And I began to wonder about the impact of talking about these issues openly—thereby encouraging confession in explicit ways in our church communities.
Confession happens in a variety of contexts. There’s the well-known individual confessions you see in movies, usually in the Catholic church. Then there’s the more common corporate confession read out during Sunday services, with a general absolution that follows. Finally, in informal contexts, the faithful can confess to clergy or other laypeople, sometimes in the context of spiritual direction or Christian therapy.
And, at the megachurch service, I realized that pastors can encourage all of these kinds of confession by preaching on the most difficult parts of our lives, pointing toward the relief and redemption confession can offer.
When I first began my research into thriving, progressive, Protestant churches, I didn’t think confession would come up much at all. I still wondered if confession, even confession in Lent, was an outdated hallmark of guilt and shame-ridden theology.
Imagine my surprise when it came up in my very first interview. When asked what he liked about the church, my interviewee mentioned the deep authenticity of his congregation. “Church should be a place where I can talk about the worst thing I have ever done . . . ‘I committed adultery last night,’ or ‘I didn’t mean to, but I hit my kid.’”
Indeed, his congregation allowed for sharing these kinds of intimate confessions in anonymous prayers, written down by congregants and then read aloud during Prayers of the People. And he said that that level of authenticity, that ability to confess anything to your church, was the reason he came.
His comments floored me. He was suggesting an unprecedented level of transparency in mainline church.
Later that day, I attended his worship service for myself. And, sure enough, one of those anonymous Prayers of the People contained a confession of alcohol addiction and a plea for help.
After the Prayers, the pastor stood up. “Who here, in this congregation, has struggled with addiction?” he asked. At least thirty hands went up. “Whoever wrote that prayer can talk to any of these people,” he said. “We will all help you.”
I was seeing again, firsthand, the impact that deep confession can have. It’s not just a paragraph rattled off; when done well, it means unburdening ourselves fully, being raw and open and honest in a way that we can’t in other spaces. And then, we can hear God’s voice more clearly.
Most importantly, confession helps us open to the reassurance that nothing can separate us from God—or our church family.
Confession in Lent
In today’s progressive Christianity, Lent is vaguely tied to confession. In Episcopal congregations, Ash Wednesday and Good Friday are usually the only times of year when formal confession to a priest is explicitly offered. Other congregations may only bring out corporate confessions in Lenten worship.
This is a significant departure from how confession was practiced in congregations across the Christian spectrum fifty years ago. Pre-Vatican II, Catholics were required to confess every time before receiving the Eucharist; now, the minimum is once a year. In other denominations where confession is an individual affair, it is offered far less frequently. Where it is a corporate part of worship, it has often been downplayed or removed.
Why has confession largely disappeared from our churches? Does it have a purpose in our twenty-first century culture, especially for Millennials? What might a healthy practice of confession look like, across the denominational spectrum, for modern congregations?
This seems like a timely liturgical season to explore these questions. So we’ll be talking about confession in Lent.
Why do we need confession?
Confession happens in a variety of contexts. However you do it, though, there’s one main thrust: naming the burdens on our conscience and receiving assurance of God’s forgiveness.
In earlier articles, I’ve talked about spiritual needs changing in different cultural contexts. This need to confess and be forgiven, I believe, is one of the few needs that stays constant.
In fact, I would argue that today, we need confession more than ever (but more about that in a few weeks).
The question, then, isn’t about whether confession is necessary in our congregations. It’s about how we can create rituals of confession and absolution that meet the spiritual needs of our time and place.
But before we get to practical expressions of confession for today’s Christians, we need some background. Next week, we’ll be talking about the shame and guilt traditionally tied to confession. How do we redeem the idea and language of confession in our congregations?
The following week, I’ll share why confession is particularly important in our contemporary American culture, especially through my personal experience with Millennials and Generation Z.
Then, we’ll get to practical implementation. How do we confess corporately? How do we practice confession one-on-one? What could that look like across denominations, in ways that address societal needs today?
We’ll wrap up with looking at how confession is usually practiced in churches today and how it can be redeemed and updated to better address the spiritual needs that today’s society—especially Millennials and Gen Z—are bringing to the table.
Am I missing anything? What would you like to talk about regarding confession in Lent? Comment below and let me know!
If you’re interested in my recent liturgy series, co-hosted by Young People’s Theology, you can find it here.
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