Children and Youth Sunday School
10:30 AM Every Sunday
It only takes a Spark! This first line from the song “Pass it On” is also the name of our new Sunday School program for children and youth. We hope Spark will ignite faith for our young people, but we need your help. Spark is a very teacher friendly curriculum with a quick 5 minute DVD overview of the day's lesson and a pamphlet for teaching each week.
Bring your children, your grandchildren, your neighbor’s kids, to join the fun and excitement of learning and growing together with Spark. Sunday school started September 20th.
Adult Class - 10:30 AM Every Sunday
We have 2 weekly Bible studies going on, starting this month. The adult quick study (20 minute) class is looking at Ezekiel and the Monday evening home meeting at the Gruber's is looking at Job. Neither of these are easy reading. Both present challenges in understanding the Bible, yet both speak to us today in powerful ways. Job addresses the question of why bad things happen and how to make sense of suffering in a world ruled by our most loving God? Ezekiel deals with a difficult time in Israel’s' history and also address that basic question of what is God doing while we struggle and suffer? Ezekiel is some of the weirdest stuff in the Bible and Job some of the toughest, yet even these books contain treasures, wisdom, comfort, counsel that speak to us as if written today.
Consider for a moment this marvel that is the word of God. The most recent writings collected in scripture are still almost 2,000 years old and yet they can speak to us still today. We find in scripture the best advice, uplifting and encouraging stories and poetry, powerful parables and inspiring prophecy, a call to justice and the history of God's love for all his people. Our Scripture has been collected over years and handed from generation to generation, translated and shared all over the world. It is a most amazing gift from God.
Most of us have been free to read it and familiar with it for all of our lives. That precious freedom and familiarity can lead us to underestimate its power. Tyrants rarely make that mistake; it has been banned, hidden and misrepresented by many who fear its power. People have died for the right to read, posses and translate the Word of God.
The prophet Ezekiel symbolically swallows a scroll in the beginning of his ministry as a sign of being nourished and sustained by the word of God. He reminds us of our need to ingest, to digest theword, to read and claim and wrestle and revel in the word of God. Take time to come to a Bible study or pick up your Bible at home and spend some time with the word of God.
Unbinding Reluctance to Share Our Faith
We have discovered that over 80 % of the people in our community do not go to church. They should hear that God loves them. Jesus tells us to go out and make disciples. That’s hard to do. Presbyterians aren’t good at this. But we can learn simple ways to tell others the story of our faith without knocking on doors with tracts. The books will be provided and a short amount of reading will be done each week.
The first class of a four-week, study of UNBINDING the GOSPEL (Real Life Evangelism) by Martha Grace Reece. leb by Nan Best, was held Monday, January 4 Remaining classes are Mondays from 6 to 7:30 PM, January 25, Februaruy 1 and 9. Copies of the book are available at no cost.
The study explores many aspects of evangelism in mainline churches. We hope to understand and overcome reluctance to share our faith, realize the benefits for ourselves and our church and learn comfortable and effective tools for witnessing.
Setting aside four nights for this study will give us tools to reach others and share the news that God loves them. Be part of this group. It will make us stronger Followers and enable us to share the Good News in new ways. Dare to be there!