What we “normally” offer is suspended due to the pandemic. Updating the website is part of updating our electronic educational offerings. Hopefully, the website has a few, varied gifts that are helpful to you. More to come.
This has been an incredibly different year, so let's try an incredibly different approach to Confirmation/Reception/Reaffirmation preparation. On Sundays in June outside on the Greeneway, between the services, we will connect with God afresh, minus the stuff that gets in the way.
Instructed Baptism, Confession, and Wedding
|
|
|
On Sunday mornings there is a drop-in Bible study, spiritual discipline or current topic group that meets between the services. When we do use a curriculum, they are chosen for both superb scholarship and accessibility for anyone who hasn’t been in a Bible study. This offering features lay or clergy leadership.
At the other end of the spectrum is “EFM”. St Paul’s has a long and happy tradition of offering “Education for Ministry," an extension course of The School of Theology of The University of the South. Over four years participants study: Old and New Testaments, Church History, and Theology in a committed small group seminar that features both reading assignments and a structured conversation called Theological Reflection. It is not preparation for ordination, but for lay ministry. We are all called to be ministers by pointing to God and caring for God's creation. If it is a fit for you, it helps tremendously in recognizing God in the Bible, in the world and in your life. We usually have 2 seminar groups, one Lay mentored and the other mentored by the Rector.
In the last few years, we have been offering a class that meets in the middle of the spectrum. With a smile it’s called “New England Bible Study: more information, less personal sharing.” Come as you are able. There is plenty of information given if you’d like to read in advance and detailed notes of each presentation are given for those who prefer the boiled down version. They are stand-alone sessions but if you made it through all 33, you’d get through the Biblical story.
Seasonal offerings at Advent and Lent: sometimes musical, sometimes worship, sometimes designed for families…brief and lovely.
A couple of post pandemic design ideas:
This one possibly for folks who have already done EFM or right much reading on their own: a biography and an original (translated) work of 4 theologians: an ancient, a reformer, a modern and a post-modern. Our lives and thoughts make so much more sense in context.
A book study of spiritual classics, again it is strengthening and enlightening to read: an ancient, a reformer, a modern and a post-modern.
At the other end of the spectrum is “EFM”. St Paul’s has a long and happy tradition of offering “Education for Ministry," an extension course of The School of Theology of The University of the South. Over four years participants study: Old and New Testaments, Church History, and Theology in a committed small group seminar that features both reading assignments and a structured conversation called Theological Reflection. It is not preparation for ordination, but for lay ministry. We are all called to be ministers by pointing to God and caring for God's creation. If it is a fit for you, it helps tremendously in recognizing God in the Bible, in the world and in your life. We usually have 2 seminar groups, one Lay mentored and the other mentored by the Rector.
In the last few years, we have been offering a class that meets in the middle of the spectrum. With a smile it’s called “New England Bible Study: more information, less personal sharing.” Come as you are able. There is plenty of information given if you’d like to read in advance and detailed notes of each presentation are given for those who prefer the boiled down version. They are stand-alone sessions but if you made it through all 33, you’d get through the Biblical story.
Seasonal offerings at Advent and Lent: sometimes musical, sometimes worship, sometimes designed for families…brief and lovely.
A couple of post pandemic design ideas:
This one possibly for folks who have already done EFM or right much reading on their own: a biography and an original (translated) work of 4 theologians: an ancient, a reformer, a modern and a post-modern. Our lives and thoughts make so much more sense in context.
A book study of spiritual classics, again it is strengthening and enlightening to read: an ancient, a reformer, a modern and a post-modern.
