New Education Class Coming

You are invited to join us for an interesting exchange of ideas, thoughts, questions, feelings and knowledge as we explore the Bible, including scriptures, stories, myths, and miracles. We will be meeting hybrid style, both in church and on Zoom from 9:30 am to 10:15 am Sunday mornings, starting September 5. Those who wish to meet at church will meet in the Fellowship Hall; those who prefer to meet on Zoom will use the same Zoom link used for worship.

We are going to begin our study with scripture. Each week 3 people will be asked to bring to our study a scripture — a favorite, one that is troublesome, one that is difficult to understand or one that is challenging in some other way. It may be a scripture you think would be interesting to explore. There will be no time limit; we may get thru only one scripture in a week, or we may get through 2 or 3. But we will plan to have 2 or preferably 3 people prepared each week with a scripture.

Through our discussions and sharing of scriptures, we will hopefully gain new knowledge and insight which will help us to understand not only scripture but also ourselves more fully.  When we have exhausted the scriptures we wish to discuss, we will move on to other stories in the Bible. We are excited to get started and look forward to  hearing and seeing scripture through you.

We're Back!

On July 25, twenty of us gathered for our first worship service in the sanctuary since last March. Another nine of us joined the hybrid service via Zoom. It was so nice to see this group in the sanctuary while also knowing that we had people from all over the country (including Texas, Minnesota, and Arkansas!) joining us online.

The process of getting us back to this point has been long. Moderator Sonya Blevins has worked with Pastor Christy Newton to lead discussions in various forums (congregational meetings, Admin Council, Ministry Council, etc.) of how best to re-open in a safe and meaningful way. On July 4th, we had a very nice in person service in our Peace Garden and on Zoom. We had two other “practice runs” with small groups working in the sanctuary to test out the technology for these hybrid services. Carl Cordes spearheaded this effort with new technology and worked with several others in the church to test out the camera and audio equipment to make sure the service could be enjoyed by everyone involved in the sanctuary and at home.

Overall, we were pleased with how the first sanctuary service went. There were definitely some hiccups and bugs that need to be worked out. This is going to be an ongoing process as we work with the technology and try new things so a meaningful worship experience can be had by everyone in the congregation.

A big Thank You! to everyone who worked to make this service possible. For many of us, it felt so good to be back home in our sanctuary. These last 16 months have been very hard and we are certainly not out of the pandemic yet. But, some sense of normalcy is so important for our mental, emotional and spiritual health. July 25th was a big first step in that process of getting back to “normal” in our life at First Christian Church.