Adult Christian Education Invitation
How many of us know that we have entered the time in the life of the Christian Church known as The Great Fifty Days? If you are like me, before I attended seminary, I just knew about Advent before Christmas and Lent before Easter! However, there are so many interesting and important times in the Church’s life that orient us in our faith journeys and help us, in exciting ways, to prepare and experience our discipleship journeys! Learning about “Calendar: Christ’s Time for the Church” (By Dr. Laurence Hull Stookey, my Worship professor at Wesley Seminary) is just one of the opportunities we hope to be offering in the upcoming fall roster of study classes.
Are you aware that there is both Ordinary and Extraordinary time in the Christian Church? Do you know that the Great Fifty Days mentioned above is a Feast of Weeks, seven weeks of seven days following our Easter celebration, leading up to Pentecost? This is where we begin to learn more about the work of the Holy Spirit and how the Church continues to enfold us into the life and ministry of Christ and God’s intentions ever since the time of Creation!
The Church also celebrates seven major feasts each year, and seven are very important throughout the story and within our sacred Scriptures. As Dr. Stookey notes in his opening chapter, in our faith tradition, we become part of this story as we each are learning how to live our lives “at the intersection of time and eternity.”
A few moments ago, I mentioned Creation, and, at April’s post-worship Social Principles study session, participants were challenged to remember “The Divine Rhythm of Work and Sabbath.” This relationship was discussed in a beautifully written account of the creation story (The Spring Issue of the Plough Quarterly, themed “Why We Work,” a Mennonite Journal that seeks to inspire faith and action) by theologian and professor Alastair Roberts. Humanity seems to have forgotten God’s intention for us to continue this divine labor and God’s intentions for us to carry on the amazing work begun, making it “fruitful, effective, and good!” This was even meant to become an ongoing relationship of work in communion; We are challenged to consider the deeply critical moral implications of having become negligent or half-hearted in forgetting this communal relationship by having let our work, our labor, become acquisitive, harmful, and even violent in proportions.
The committee overseeing the work of the Adult Christian Education component of FUMCWA’s ministry will meet on Tuesday, May 13th, at 1:45 pm. The new co-chairs, Sue Klescewski and Deacon Nancy Lanman, look forward to meeting with other teachers and committee members, including Bonnie Chesky, who has so graciously and faithfully led the group for many years! They are so thankful her experience will continue to be part of our work. Attending a class can also be an enriching and encouraging way for each of us to become a meaningful part of alleviating and addressing the brokenness we are experiencing so profoundly now. It can gift us with joy when least expecting it!
Thomas Bolton
God cares about you and so do we.