Among the questions proposed to the pastors were the following: 

1.  Do you have a personal interview with each candidate prior to confirmation with the view of ascertaining his fitness for the act?

2.  Do you at that interview inquire as to the candidate’s repentance, faith, conversion, new life?

3.  Is the confirmation of the candidate dependent upon the satisfactory result of this examination?

Among the answers were the following:  “Not, individually.”  “No, except before the congregation.”  “Not formally so.”  “For at least six months.”  “Only with certain ones,” etc., etc.

A goodly number of pastors speak to the candidates "unter vier Augen," but they are the exceptions.  The ordinary practice knows nothing of such a course.  The public examination is little more than an exhibition.

In other words, we have strayed over to the Roman side of the road.  The difference between us and the Roman priest being this:  he will see them again at the confessional, but those whom we confirm in this superficial way, many of them, we shall never see again.  Or, if perchance we should see some of them, it will be at long range, the same as when we first admitted them to confirmation.  Imagine a doctor curing his patients in this way, getting them together in a room and prescribing for their diseases from what he sees of them in a crowd.  The care of souls cannot be performed in bulk, it is the care of a soul.

Besides what a privilege the pastor loses, the opportunity of a lifeline, not only to explain to an inquiring heart the mysteries of our faith in the light of his personal need, but also to put himself in such a relation to the individual that he may become a beloved Beichvater.  But alas, we have to a great extent lost the confessional.  Instead of it we have a hybrid combination of Lutheran doctrine and Reformed practice, and we distribute our absolution ore rotundo over mixed congregations on Sunday mornings and at the Preparatory Service.  But the real confession we seldom hear and a valid absolution therefore we cannot pronounce.  The Keys have indeed been committed to us, but we seem to have lost them, for the door of the sheepfold hangs very loose in our churches and the sheep run in and out pretty much as they please.

But while some of our churches are thus leaning toward Rome, there is need of caution also against the opposite error.  A false and exaggerated spirituality will lead to standards of holiness which are not warranted by the New Testament.  Of these Luther himself somewhere said, “May the God of mercy preserve me from belonging to a congregation of holy people.  I desire to belong to a church of poor sinners who constantly need forgiveness and the help of a good physician."*
     Methods of receiving candidates into active membership vary.  Some
synods, as we have seen, make no distinction whatever