ADULT
Formation
Growing in faith is a life-long journey and we offer many opportunities for adults to explore the Christian faith and discover how to live out their faith in the world. At Good Samaritan, we value questions, wrestle with doubts, and don’t settle for easy answers. Learning together in community helps us understand more about God, the world, and ourselves. Our formation opportunities for adults are safe places to wrestle with real life and discover how God is present through every stage, experience, or challenge.
Adult formation is offered in a variety of ways, including Sunday morning formation during the academic year, small groups, retreats, and weekly Bible studies.
- Sunday morning formation takes place at 9:00 a.m. except during the Summer. Contact Fr. Chris for more information.
- Women’s Group meets each week on Tuesday evenings at 7:00 p.m. Contact Cathy Strohl for more information.
- Education for Ministry (EfM) is a four-year program designed by the School of Theology at The University of the South. Contact Kimberly Kim for more information.
Current Adult Formation Series:
We hear quite frequently that the hallmarks of Lent are prayer, fasting, and almsgiving. While there can be a variety among types of fasting and giving alms, no category is as wide-open and as potentially daunting as prayer. Questions abound: How should I pray? Am I doing it correctly? I’m having X emotion, is that right? What am I supposed to get out of this? Why can’t I hear God talk back? What if I fall asleep? What if I don’t like praying a certain way?
The beauty of prayer, though, is that there are many different ways to do and there really isn’t a wrong way to pray. And, there is almost certainly at least one form of prayer that will suit everyone. And that’s what we will be exploring for the next five weeks. We will be looking at prayer practices from the ancient to the modern, learning about their origins, why they are popular or common, and specifics about different forms of prayer. And, then we will have time to practice a new type of prayer.
Our topics will include:
March 9: Icons
March 16: Prayer Beads
March 23—Rage Prayers
March 30— Daily Office
April 6—Contemplative Prayers (Centering Prayer, Lectio Divina, Examen)
Past Sessions:
Previously we covered a broad range of topics. Here is a sampling of the sessions we had:
- The Transfiguration Icon
- Why we do what we do when we do it and other peculiarities of church
- The Power of Gratitude
- Monsters in the Bible
- The Story of the New Testament: Books and Readers in the Early Church
- Clobbering the Clobber Passages
- Miracles of Jesus
- Finding God Through Our Senses
- The Wild and Surprising World of Angels
- Light of the World: Looking at Advent with New Eyes
- Surprising Saints
- Habits and Spiritual Practices that Support Resilience
- Church History: A six week study of questions and issues with which the early Church had to grapple and how that influenced what we practice today
- Advent Series: The Proto-Evangelium and Its Influence on Tradition; The Voice of Isaiah; John the Baptist; and Poetry of the Incarnation
- What is a Priest?
- What is Happening at a Eucharist?
- Lenten Series on Prayer: Praying the Psalms; Praying the Old Testament Canticles; Different Methods of Contemplative Prayer; Poetic Language for God
- Church History: How the Romans viewed the Early Christians; How Christianity went from a Sect to a Major Religion
- Grappling with Racism within the Episcopal Church
- The Difference Course – a five week study exploring how to follow the example of Jesus within a deeply divided world
- How we Engage in Theological Reflection
