Associate Pastor’s Letter

Our Intergenerational Sunday School will be during coffee hour at several stations in the Library Lounge. The stations will incorporate all the preaching themes for the month and everyone can interact with them as they feel moved. A “shepherd” will guide the elementary school students as a group through their stations. You can do one a week, you can do several if you miss a week, or you can do the same one for several weeks if it is meaningful to you.

There will still be a preschool program that is separate and age-appropriate for our littlest ones ages 3–5, but we want to invite everyone to be able to dive deeper into the scripture and the lessons, not just the kids. We found that the adult Sunday school class was not at a good time since it conflicted with choir, there wasn’t a place for the kids to go if parents wanted to attend, and let’s face it, getting to church earlier than the worship service is just hard for many of us!

The church is the “head” of Mickey Mouse and the kids are off to the side in the one “ear”. What we have learned is that this separation has led a generation of young people to never know what worship or the faith community is like. When the youth get to through their student years, they don’t know what it is like to be in “church” and don’t come back, or at least don’t come back until they have children. Smaller churches where everyone needed to play a role, young and old, have had the most influence on keeping people engaged in church as they grow up. We do a great job of including our children in worship, but we need to make sure we keep working on the relationships.

So, Intergenerational Sunday School is a chance for all of us to get to know each other. We have been talking all summer about being more of a community. Studying together is another way to do that. And to include our young people in the studying is a wonderful opportunity. We can all get to know the kids as we talk with them at the stations. We can model what life long learning and spiritual formation is for them as they see us interact with the stations. And we can all make some deeper connections to God and to each other.

Don’t worry that we will be asking you to do kid things. We will have a variety of stations, some being for everyone, some being more child focused, and some being more adult focused. Some will be more prayerful, some informational, some mission oriented, and some crafty. We all learn differently and need different things at different times in our spiritual path. Don’t let that stop you though from doing some of the “kid things” with the kids — they shouldn’t always be the only ones who get to have all the fun!

We hope that over the next few months there will be something for everyone to connect with. Please give it a try and let us know what you like or what you wish there could be. Our deep prayer is that this will open up new ways for you to connect with God and with each other — younger and older alike.

Grace and Peace, Pastor Becky

Presbyterian Youth Triennium 2019

This past July, three of our members joined the delegation from Susquehanna Valley Presbytery to go to the Presbyterian Youth Triennium in West Lafayette, Indiana. Held every three years on the campus of Purdue University, Triennium is a gathering of 5000+ youth and from all over the United States, plus delegations from other countries around the world. Jullian Wanjama was our youth participant, and Pastor Becky and Shawn Landon went as chaperones.