How Best to Teach Our Youth – and Ourselves

One of the central elements of our life together as a congregation is education. We have education programs for our children on Sunday mornings, we help teens on their journey to confirmation, we offer a variety of ways for adults to explore their faith. Often, these educational opportunities come together on a Sunday morning – along, of course, with our times for worship and social life.

A special advisory committee is looking at the way we handle education at Memorial. What is the best way to help our children grow in the way of Jesus? What are the opportunities we provide for adults? And how do we do this in a way that keeps worship at the center of our life as a community and social time as the way we nurture our relationships to one another?

Because all of these elements come together on Sunday mornings, adjusting any of them affects all of them. So the advisory committee would like to hear your thoughts, first of all on what kind of education experiences we ought to be planning for our children in the future and then on how to expand our education opportunities for adults. Should there be changes to the Sunday morning schedule to enhance these things? Should we be creating new ways to help all of us –- children and adults – learn what it means to be a follower of Jesus?

Please join the advisory committee on Sunday morning, Feb. 7, at about 11:15 in the music room to share your thoughts on our education programs. If you cannot make it to that gathering, please contact members of the committee to share your thoughts. They are Celia Kiela, Janine Bessemer, Jackie Neidhart, Betsy Robbins, Beth Magness, Michael Magness, Jessica Veloff, Jann Veloff, Pastor Phil and Pastor Leah.