once around

(Rules for Once Around: Take a minute or so to share what you experienced this week or have been thinking about recently, related to your spirituality. Refrain from comments or discussion until the end of the Once Around.)

• South Bend Tribune - starting website about parenting, keeping in mind gender expectations, "MomsMichiana.com"
• Pastoral transition - From the outside, it seems that gender is playing a big role in pastoral selection.
• NPR - Bart Erman - going from Moody to where he is now, "if there is a God."
• Sunday School class - Appreciate the idea of constructing and figuring out theological discussions.
• Kent and Michelle Oyer are going to Nicaragua over spring break. Vacation, but also to join/visit with future SST leaders
• Committee for pastoral search - what are we, as a class, expecting of a pastor? What is our foundation?
• Youth pastoral change - very worried that there will be a delay for a quality replacement
• Dealing with non-peace issues, sexist issues, pro American/anti-other culture comments from family and friends. How do we respond?
• Have friends with diverse beliefs. Trying to respond without judgment.
• Presidential election - now considering different views/political stances, perhaps previously held views are not as critical to our "national health"
• Experienced a stretch with "public speaking" refereeing.
• Really looking forward to new season.
• Plug for upcoming class - Read about it on the blog - Experiencing immigration & racism
• Concerned about politics
• Experiencing spirituality - Starting in Tibet to a recent Goshen News request for photos linked to scripture. Have a good photo of "in the world, but not of the world." However, found there was no actual scripture stating that. Found that his Tibetan photo of a sunset was taken within a few hours of the Goshen News photo (below) recently published with this request.

• 
• Political involvement - concern about what candidates really believe and what they will pull from for making decisions, concern about a call for Mennonites to pull out of the political discussion because it quickly becomes divisive rather than unifying - is unity really key, don't we need to have voices of peace and hope?

2.17.08 class discussion

View blog, short tutorial
Topic review
Join together with a few others, choose some topics, facilitate discussions
Additional Topics:
Hispanic-American culture
Armstrong: Mohammed A Prophet for our Times

Other ideas
We could take some time outside of Sunday School to get together to share, learn more about topics

Check out the Borderlands Calendar for upcoming topics as well as the Possible Future Topics list.

message from pastors

To: Adult Sunday School Class Conveners/Coordinators:
From: Pastoral Team
Re: Combining Adult SS Classes April 6, 13, 20

Gary will include in his report tomorrow (February 10) that one of one of the needs emerging from the December member visits
and questionnaire, the January 19 "Re-membering College Mennonite Church" experience, and his observations, is for teaching
about a biblical framework for understanding the church. While that sounds generic, it will likely be new for a (vast?) majority of the congregation. It is based onCongregational Discipling (Herald Press, 1997), which emerged out of a three year study by a joint MC/GCMC task force. It has been embraced by 150+ MCUSA congregations of various stripes and sizes.

At the Tuesday meeting, the Church Board supported this direction for a series of post-Easter sermons (March 30-April 20), with at least an elective S.S. class for in depth teaching. The Pastoral Team, after further processing, encourages all Adult S.S. classes to combine on three of those Sundays, April 6, 13, 20, for in depth teaching that cannot be conveyed in sermons. The Pastoral Team believes that it is important for this material to have maximum exposure in the congregation, since future transitional processes will build on it.

Note: The March 30 (a fifth Sunday) S.S. hour has already been set aside for congregational singing.

So, we are encouraging all adult classes to combine on April 6, 13, & 20. We appreciate your gracious response to this request and the extra work entailed in adjusting your curricular schedules. As noted in the beginning of the transitional period, flexibility in making room for transitional work will shorten the overall length of the transitional period.

We wanted Gary's Sunday report to be as specific as possible with next steps, so this e-mail message is our attempt to give conveners/coordinators a 23 hour heads up.

If you have the opportunity Sunday morning, please encourage your class to attend the congregational meeting at 1PM. The entire report will provide context for the importance of the above series.

If you have questions, please contact Gary, or any member of the Pastoral Team.

2.10.08 Class Discussion

March 30 Hymn Sing
April 6,13, 20 Combined classes with Gary Martin

Facilitator: Humberto will begin as facilitator and liason with office

Pastoral Search update: Krista needs to bow out as the committee schedule has changed and will now conflict with her Masters classes

Sunday School Ideas
+
-Sharing times, personal
-life applications
-might have come from book study
-Book study- Spong alternative Scholarship
-age variety

-time to read books a
-what do you do w/theological discussions practical app

Possibilities
-Once around
-blog ideas from book study
-maybe hare 2 week commitment to lead class
-SS class parties and social times may be more conducive to building relationships than only class time
-Facilitor responsibility

Questions
-How do we feel connected to this group?
-In illness, are we a class who care for each other?
-What does this class want to?
-How do we relate to each other?

Topics
politics
environmental
illegals
community participation
weak or growing points/strengths of class

Feb 17 Revisit charts brainstorm, maybe a tutorial on blogging

plan for sunday february 10

1. Sunday we will be spending some time dividing into groups and determining what topics we'd like to discuss and who will lead those topics. Each "group" (and I have no idea how we'll form those groups) will be responsible for sharing leadership for the parts of the next months. Please come with some topics in mind.

2. I am going to email the church office and ask for some supplies to help those of us who are teachers work (chart paper, markers, easel, etc.) Hopefully this will help us organize.

3. We would like to update the email list on Sunday. If you know someone that isn't on this list and should be, either bring their email address or send it to me.

4. I am going to be letting the church office know that the topic they should print in the bulletin is: Exploring the Integration of Faith and Life (instead of Hitchins' book).

2.3.08 sunday school brainstorming

• Immigration

• Peace Position
• personal tradegy
• Iraq
  

• Current events- take turns

• Small group leadership
• decide in small groups what your group will do

• Make a Month or 6 month topic decision

• Keep chart paper of ideas (Blog)
• Keep track of ideas and stories
  

• Perhaps keep have Stan facilitate stories

• Everyone bring 2 ideas

• 100 Ways America is Screwing Up the World by John Tirman - Myron could share

blog launch

Welcome to the CMC - Borderlands blog.

Check out our calendar to see upcoming events and topics. Click the Google calendar link on the right side of this page.