Worship is only one part of our Sunday morning experience. Adults and young people gather between services for coffee and deeper faith conversations through study, activities, and discussions about Biblical texts or current events. Some classes meet every week. Others meet for a shorter duration of one to three weeks. Most classes are self contained units, so even if you miss a Sunday or two, you can join in without feeling lost. All Classes meet from 10:00 to 10:45 a.m. unless otherwise indicated.
Weekly Sunday Classes
Depend on it! – Experience learning with a consistent leader and reliable group of friends each Sunday morning
- Lion’s Den [Library] Lay leader Gary Davis, welcomes anyone at anytime to engage in a passionate study of Luke and Acts.
- SonShine Bunch – [Sonshine Room] James Parks and Jason Booth explore Matthew’s interpretation of the life of Jesus.
- The Pause -Amy Ruedas will guide parents of young children in weekly discussions that support them in imparting their faith to their children.
- First Sunday’s with Pastor Franke – In March, April, and May, Pastor Franke will lead a theological reflection of the Sunday texts.
Eclectic! – Experience a variety of topics, learning styles, and facilitators each Sunday morning.
March 18 & 25, 2012
Is Ethics, like Beauty, in the Eyes of the Beholder? – Novell Northcutt - One of our most highly requested speakers will return to engage us in a lively conversation on a topic that is important for us today. Mr. Northcutt currently works as a Research Associate at the Center for Community College Student Engagement.
April 15, 2012
Parents, Kids, and Money – Tiffanie Schuh & Jesse Bennight of Thrivent for Lutherans – Stewardship requires good money management that can be taught from a young age. You will receive the tools needed to teach your children to share, save and spend in a fun, easy to understand format.
April 22, 2012
Caring for God’s DRY Earth – Hosted by the Environmental Task Force – Experts say the drought will continue to plague Texas. If so caring for our earth may require changes in landscaping and water usage. A Guest speaker will share alternative ideas so that God’s earth will continue to provide life.
Relationships, Wisdom, Service Groups, and Web-based Learning
Small Groups – Join one of the existing small groups: prayer shawl, choir, handbells, prayer group, morning Bible studies, covenant home Bible study, men’s breakfast, vintage friends, firm believers, men’s basketball, pray and putt, quilting, Austin Employment Group, and more. Explore this website to find out more.
Can’t find a Small Group to Match your Gifts and Interests? – Gather 4 or more people together to begin a group. You decide the format, meeting times, and nature of the group. Invite new people to the group! Contact Amy Ruedas for guidance, promotion and resources.
Web-based Learning – Don’t have time for a group? Web-lessons and devotions can be found on the side bar of this website throughout the semester.
For further consideration about the importance of adult faith formation:
Diarmuid O’Murchu, author of the book, Adult Faith, Growing in Wisdom and Understanding, wrote the following about faith formation:
“Attention to the developmental wisdom of the adult is central to the process of transformative living…For faith development, I suggest four areas that need extensive and immediate attention:
- Growth in faith is a developmental process happening throughout an entire lifespan with the most significant learning and integration taking place during the adult years. Faith as a developmental process belongs first and foremost to the adult stages and not merely to younger years.
- Faith is not merely an inherited set of intellectual or religious truths based on inherited religious traditions. Faith is a psychic [intuitive] capacity, an innate endowment of every person. Many people are not even aware of this capacity and millions have not been formed or skilled on how best to mobilize this empowering potential.
- When authentic faith development is neglected, the human spirit will seek out compensatory satisfactions, and these can easily become compulsive or addictive. Formal religions can easily feed those addictions as we see in a range of contemporary religious ideologies, some committed to power, violence and others to consumeristic spirituality.
- Wise elders play an important role in various faith traditions, and the emergence in our time of more older people embracing Fowler’s universalizing stage has substantial cultural and spiritual implications for the future of human civilization…Our youth also lack inspiring adult models — at several levels. Cultivating wise elders needs to become an integral dimension of adult catechesis for the future.
Adult empowerment sees faith as a divine gift that grows, matures, and develops in accordance with developmental life stages. Faith formation is an open, lifelong process, with the potential – in old age- of blossoming into a sense of universal wholeness, provided previous stages have been negotiated in a good enough way.”