Sunday After-Worship Group
During the pandemic closure, we started a study/discussion group that met via Zoom after worship. We decided to keep that group going after we returned to on-site (in-person) worship.
Some of the past books or websites we've used include:
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Gifts of the Dark Wood: Seven Blessings for Soulful Skeptics (and Other Wanderers) by Eric Elnes is described as a guidebook for spirituality in a post-Christian world. Though commonly understood as a place to be feared and avoided, the Dark Wood is the surest place to meet God. It is a place where you may feel uncertain, empty, lost, tempted, and alone. Yet these feelings---these gifts of the Dark Wood---can be your greatest assets on your journey because they invite you to probe, question, and discover. According to the ancients, you don't need to be a saint or spiritual master to experience profound awakening. You don't even have to be "above average." All you really need to be is struggling.
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"Front Porch" Conversations video series was created by the West Virginia Conference out of a desire to invite individuals and congregations into a conversation that would raise our individual and collective awareness regarding racism and challenge us to the work we need to do within our own beings and in our communities to eliminate racism. West Virginia Bishops S. Clifton Ives, William Boyd Grove, Ernest Lyght, and Sandra Steiner Ball created the series, as well as Rev. Dr. Ken Ramsey, who helped the bishops pull this project together. Links to the individual videos and study session questions: Video 1 -- session 1 questions; Video 2 -- session 2 questions; Video 3 -- session 3 questions.
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I'm Black. I'm Christian. I'm Methodist edited by Rudy Rasmus. Ten Black women and men explore life through the lens of compelling personal religious narratives. They are people and leaders whose lives demonstrate the tangible power of a divine purpose and evidence of what grace really means in the face of hardship, disappointment, and determination. Each journey intersects because of three central elements that are the focus of the book: We're Black. We're Christians. We're Methodists. Each person starts with the fact "I'm Black" but goes on to resolve the conflict of also being Christiand and Methodist. They confront aspects of White theology, White supremacy, and White racism in order to ground an oppositional experience that resists domination over four centuries in American.
Our Strangely Warmed Hearts: Coming Out into God's Call by Bishop Karen Oliveto. Part One covers homosexuality in society (chapter 1) and the United Methodist Church (chapter 2). Part Two titled "Coming Out as an Experience of God's Grace" (chapters 3-8) gives personal narratives from homosexual church leaders of various ages and levels of being open and public about their homosexuality.
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Growing Faith in Community by Pastor Anne Schlesinger. A boolet that was her second year project of the Academy for Spiritual Formation. She describes it this way: "It is a short instruction manual to help people learn how to form small covenant groups similar to the ones John Wesley created in the 18th century. The Table, a church in Sacramento, used this process to take a dying church of under twenty members to a vibrant church of over 250 members. They have been growing for the last ten years! I used their resource and several others to create a similar system I would like Wesley to try. When I get the booklet printed and bound, I will make it available to anyone who wants to take a look at it. If it works as well as I hope it will, we will all have covenant groups to help us on our journey."
Study Guides and Class Materials for Past Sunday Morning Classes
Select the "Past Classes" link above to go to materials created for some of our Sunday morning (before worship) classes in the past---a lot of really good material in there! They include study guides for Marcus Borg's "The Heart of Christianity" and Huston Smith's "The Soul of Christianity", links to the Five Practices study and materials for our "Methodism 101" series.
Tuesday morning Bible Study at 10 AM at the parsonage. The group reads aloud from one of the books of the Bible and then shares questions and reactions to the text. Contact Pastor Anne for further details.
Tuesday night Disciple Bible Study at 7 PM in The Gathering Place led by Pat Carter.
Walk To Emmaus
The Walk to Emmaus is a spiritual renewal program intended to strengthen the local church through the development of Christian disciples and leaders. The program's approach seriously considers the model of Christ's servanthood and encourages Christ's disciples to act in ways appropriate to being "a servant of all." Beginning with a 3-day retreat and following up with regular small group meetings, Emmaus participants seek to Christianize their environments of family, job, and community through the ministry of their congregations. For information about Walks in our area see the Southern San Joaquin Emmaus contact page (but note the displayed email addresses have been modified to foil the spam robots trolling for email addresses) or any one of the several people in our congregation who have been on Walks.
Fellowship Groups
This space is for fellowship groups other than Bible Studies.
