February is always a fun month, what with Church Buddies, RE breakfast and getting ready for an RE Sunday service to let you all know what the kids have been learning.  We’ve been meeting in the social hall so we don’t have to deal as much with the cold and snow. But we will transition back to the schoolhouse soon, so we can take the lessons to 12:15 as needed.

This is also the time of year where we start thinking about curriculum and volunteers for next year. We are planning on splitting the RE kids into lower elementary/upper elementary-Jr. high groups. That provides lots of curriculum opportunities and also a few challenges, such as identifying enough volunteers, and how to split up the age groups for kids on the “cusp.”  Let me know if you have any ideas!

Are you hoping for a deeper connection with people from church, or perhaps a place to discuss your spiritual questions and beliefs on a deeper level? I’m excited to announce that we will be trying an adult RE experience, a mini-”covenant group”—a four-session, small group that will meet on Sundays, March 9 & 23, and April 13 & 27, after church or late afternoon/early evening, or Tuesday evenings, March 11 & 25 and April 8 & 22, depending on YOUR preference. I will pass around a sign-up clipboard this weekend with space to check preferred dates, and follow up with you to let you know final dates and times. If this works out well there will be opportunities to continue this group, or start one again in the Fall.

As Robert Hill says, “Covenant groups are a transformational practice through which we, with others, can discover our own underlying assumptions about reality and examine our ways of being, some of which have become so habitual that they seem to us just ‘the way things are.’ The practice of Small Group Ministry asks us to suspend judgment long enough to hear respectfully the understandings of others, even those vastly different from our own.”

I’m looking forward to the coming of Spring!

Spiritually yUUrs,
Sharon
Sharon Pedersen, RE Coordinator