New Member Class – Day 3 (Last Day)

November 4, 2006 by
Filed under: Church New Member Process, Religion 

Today was the last day of new member class.

Carolyn and I just barely made it on time due to Carolyn’s mammogram (routine – as far as we know all is well).  She made it home, and after some bending of the speed limit laws we made it to class just on time.  We had expected Carolyn to join us late, so this was better than we thought.

This week, we had a few new faces.  One friend of a participant visiting from out of town, and a new person (another seminary student) who is being run through “remedial New Member Class” to catch up.  Most if not all of the missing folks from last week were there today.

We started with another sharing session – this time talking about why we believe that Lawrenceville Presbyterian is right for us.  This is one of the questions that the session will ask us in a week and a half, so I believe that this was planned to let us gather our thoughts.  This took about 1/2 hour (and we got started 10 minutes late – everybody was running late today).

Next, we did a Lectio Divina session on Genesis 2:4-9.  We did a breathing exercise to calm us, and then the passage was read twice by two different people.  We meditated on it for a few minutes, and then each of us gave our thoughts.  I concentrated on the trees.  I had two thoughts – one was that I liked the diversity of the trees, all different and yet all good for food.  I believe that God sees people like that – all good (to some degree) and good for each other (to some degree).  The passage also brought to mind the fact that I’m now old enough that I can see the growth of trees.  I’m thinking primarily of the trees around our house – which over the 10 years that we’ve been here have grown from saplings to substantial trees.

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At the end, Jill asked me to speak about the Reconnecting with Faith retreat coming up in January.  I spoke extemporaneously for a few minutes on the retreat and I hope that a few people found it intriguing.  This group isn’t really the target audience – they are already in a church – but perhaps they know of someone else.

After the formal class, a few deacons arrived and laid out a brunch for any of us who could stay.  They had bagels, fruit salad, and two casseroles (the ham and egg one was good!) and drinks and such.  We all sat around and talked and ate.  It was nice.

I have a homework assignment – I have to fill out a worksheet for Jill identifying the areas of church life that I would be interested in participating in and there are a few questions on the back about what we expect to get from the church and what we plan to give to the church (not just money, time and resources).

We meet with the session on November 15th.  They take us into membership formally at that time, and then we are introduced at church the following Sunday.

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