Let's make it happen!
By Spiritual Growth Coordinator Christie Brown & Social Action Coordinator Shirley Durr
We are collaborating as the Dean Team to help bring Mission u to Minnesota this summer. Our first step was to register for the Dean training in April.
We need you!
We are looking for people who can be study leaders. Is that you or someone you know? Please let us know by April 2 if you can lead the study (described in the box below) or recommend someone we can ask to lead the study. You can contact Shirley or Christie (651-388-3124).
Training starts April 15 and study leaders need to register before that date.
Mission u will take place sometime in July. Specific dates, times, number of sessions, and venue will be decided by the study leader(s) and the Dean Team before June. Cost will depend on the venue and the number of study leaders. The Dean Team will decide whether we offer in-person, virtual, hybrid, or all of these choices after we meet with study leaders and assess our budget.
Keep watching for updates
We will be advertising information with details via flyers, email, Facebook, and website when everything is determined.
All Mission u curricula are designed to motivate, inform, and enrich our commitment to global ministry.
Living the Kin-dom 2023 Mission u Study
by Catherine Williams
The Lord’s Prayer is an old friend. Reliable, Omni-present, stalwart in its support in our conversations with Jesus. It is a prayer that has connected us to all Christians around the world for over 2000 years. As Riva Tabelisma says in Living the Kin-dom: Exploring the Lord’s Prayer as a Spiritual Practice for Social Transformation, “The Lord’s Prayer plays a significant role in every churchgoing/church-involved person’s religious practice. Whether we use the traditional or the contemporary version, we know the words.”
We know the prayer so well that “muscle memory” takes over. Rev. Tabelisma has us stop, look, and listen to what we are saying as its meaning takes form and shapes our lives. “This study moves from personal to communal application. How does the Lord’s Prayer help u live the kin-dom?” How can we “use what we learn to become the reflection of God’s love to the world?”
Our journey starts with the prayer’s origins and connects us to tradition and our experience with it. Our rote memory is stopped in its tracks as we use lectio-divina, and meditate to glean new and deeper meanings of the prayer in our lives. The aim is to “move us to share that connection in how we relate with the rest of God’s creation (people, animals, plants, and natural resources).” (p. 5)
Each time together includes large and small group discussions, prayer, and journaling. Sessions are punctuated with various spiritual practices such as baking bread, gardening; role playing; and collaborative art projects.
Living the Kin-dom can be used in Sunday school and other church settings, but we would really like to have the study during a Mission u time. Our leaders are working hard to make that happen. If you can help, let Shirley Durr or Christina Brown know.
The Children’s Curriculum is We Are the Kin-dom by Kathleen Stone: “Children are guided through exploring earthly kingdoms in contrast to God’s kin-dom by using Jesus’ parables in the Bible.” Children develop their own classroom kingdom. At the end of study, they “choose a project or ministry to support everyone within their sphere of influence.”
Seek and U Shall Find: Living in the Kin-dom by Rachel Mosher is the Youth Curriculum. This study helps youth to “find the kin-dom in the world around them, how to live what they have learned, and how to share the Good News about the kin-dom with others. The facilitator can select activities that speak to your group. Learning preferences – visual, listening and speaking, or learn-by-doing are offered. Sessions close around an altar that grows with each session.”
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