Spiritual Formation at St. John's

Discovering Faith: Again or for the first time... 
Come along with us on an extraordinary journey as we embark upon Discovering Faith – Again or for the First Time.  Four Wednesdays, beginning April 16^th, we’ll explore what faith can mean in your daily life.  Topics will include:
 v  Discovering a Spiritual Journey
 v  What We Believe as Episcopalians
 v  The Baptismal Covenant
 v  The Relationship Between the Two Great Commandments and the Great Commission

Whether you are a visitor or a life-long member, there’s something new to discover for your own spiritual life that can enrich your faith and strengthen your connections.  This group will meet in the Community Room on Wednesday nights from 7pm to 8pm.  There is opportunity to worship before at our midweek Eucharist at 6pm and space is available to pray privately after.

This is a free class and guests are welcome!  To register, please either contact the parish office at info@stjohns-saginaw.org or call at 793-9575. 

Youth Bible Study: 
Sunday, April 6^th is the beginning of a Youth Bible Study at St. John’s.  Each Sunday for the next 8 weeks (at 9:30am in the Guild Room) we will meet to discuss exciting and meaningful perspectives about our worship.  Equipped with the LifeGuide Bible Study - The Lord’s Prayer and new NRSV Student Study Bibles we will re-connect and grow in our understanding of each other and scripture.  If you ever “wished I knew them a bit better,” thought “the Bible is just too big to even start to understand,” or wondered “why do we do this every Sunday?”  …this is for you!   Come and join us!  See Amy Simons (amy@stjohns-saginaw.com) with any questions.

Faith Matters:
We continue to offer a Sunday morning gathering and it is evolving to be more than simply an informal Bible Study, it involves sharing how we see God moving in our lives and current events. Borrowing the title from the popular column in The Christian Century, look to this group to be called "Faith Matters" in the future, with new and different offerings along the way. Also coming soon will be a new format for our Lenten Series which will be on Tuesday nights this year and will focus on "Rediscovering Jesus for our Lives Today" utilizing a great book I discovered this past year, The Jesus Advantage, by Paul J. Donoghue. And this is just the beginning! Look ahead to The Messenger and bulletin announcements for even more offerings throughout this year...and bring a friend! One of the most fundamental parts of our spiritual formation - our Passionate Spirituality as Schwarz puts it - is our commitment to share our journey with others!

Via Media:
Via Media is a new tool for evangelism and spiritual formation that is designed to proclaim the Good News of God in Jesus Christ and present the Episcopal Church in a contemporary context. Over a period of eight weeks, a group gathers together to learn about Christianity within a community. Using a combination of learning styles, including video, discussion, and written materials, participants encounter the basic principles of Christianity through the Anglican approach of Scripture, tradition, and reason. Via Media is built as providing "a safe place to ask “21^st century questions" about faith. As such, it is a program that moves basic evangelism - it begins to foster a greater conversation about one's spiritual relationship, which extends to all levels of faith. In fact, one of the hallmarks of Via Media is, "No matter who you are or where you are at in your journey of faith, there is a place for you in the Episcopal Church.

In 2005, St. John's helped lead-in a new program for spiritual formation in our diocese. Via Media so impressed Bishop Leidel that he secured a diocesan-wide license for all parishes to have the program available to use. Both Michele Hoeppner and Darren Elin+ received training to become trainers themselves of the program so that in addition to introducing the program here, St. John's was also able to be a resource for the greater diocese, as each parish needed to have trained coordinators and facilitators in order to use the program.

In the fall of 2005 St. John's launched three different Via Media groups: one that met on Thursday nights; one on Wednesday mornings; and one for our youth on Sundays. Like any new program, we were moved by the growth that occurred in each of these groups-not just for their own journeys, but for what to improve upon for the program itself. We hope Via Media will continue to be a wonderful complement to what we already offer for spiritual formation, and we look forward to another Via Media group to be launched in the spring.