church classes
Durham Cathedral, England.
The last great Romanesque cathedral to have been built in Europe, Durham stands on the cusp of the Gothic, and so its form is a truly unique and compelling combination of Romanesque structure with tentatively Gothic features, such as its ribbed ceiling vaults. The Cathedral, along with its University, and with Blessed St. Cuthbert, whose shrine it contains, stands always as a testament to a Faith that can only be lived into most fully as it is lived completely in all that makes us who we have truly been made to be, as we are body, mind, heart, and Spirit. Source: Wikimedia.
The last great Romanesque cathedral to have been built in Europe, Durham stands on the cusp of the Gothic, and so its form is a truly unique and compelling combination of Romanesque structure with tentatively Gothic features, such as its ribbed ceiling vaults. The Cathedral, along with its University, and with Blessed St. Cuthbert, whose shrine it contains, stands always as a testament to a Faith that can only be lived into most fully as it is lived completely in all that makes us who we have truly been made to be, as we are body, mind, heart, and Spirit. Source: Wikimedia.
Quick Class After Mass
In the Summer of 2014, I produced a series of brief coffee hour lessons, which we called by the truly cringe-worthy title, "Fast Class After Mass." My hope was that we might find within our ten to twenty minute sessions opportunities at once to learn about some of the smaller details of our lives together in spiritual practice, worship, and faith, as we might also consider some of the more essential truths of the lives which we have been called to live in the course of our Catholic Faith. Following, are materials and links to videos for some of the classes. Not all of the details about every subject, as I reported them, are correct. I did, in my haste, get a few facts wrong, as I tripped up a bit in my presentation of the Holy Rosary. Still, for a first run, I think that we we did alright, as I believe that we learned some things together, while we enjoyed our company and time together. I am especially grateful that our Musical Director, July Hylan, got into the game too, as she offered a crafting course in which we made our own rosaries, using varieties of beads and other materials. For some of the courses, I put together handouts. I obtained the materials for these from various sources the Internet, and I have done my best to cite those sources accurately and faithfully here.
THE OTHER BOOKS OF THE BIBLE, OR, THE DEUTEROCANONICAL SCRIPTURES, ALSO CALLED "THE APOCRYPHA"
This was easily the most challenging of the Quick Class After Mass sessions. And so, the lesson that I learned was, don't try to teach something like Old Testament Canons in ten minutes!
OLD TESTAMENT CANONS | |
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DEUTEROCANONICAL SCRIPTURES | |
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Linens and things
The title says it all! This class was about altar linens.
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LINENS AND THINGS | |
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worship by the books
Since I have been at St. John's Charlotte, I have maintained the Liturgy essentially as I found it, for I believe that fundamentally, the purposes of Liturgy are pastoral, and I discerned that the Congregation would benefit from continuity in this and other aspects of our life together in mission and ministry. But, I did add a few things, here and there. Among these are the genuine leather bound 1979 Sacramentary, or "Altar Book," and the hard bound Revised Common Lectionary books which I had the Church purchase, and which we now use every Sunday, along with the Evangelarium, which the Church already owned and used prior to my time with the Parish. And so, I took the opportunity this Summer to add a session on these and some of the other books that we use in planning and conducting worship in the Episcopal Church, and in the Anglican, Orthodox, and Roman Catholic Churches more generally. Unfortunately, the week in which we had this session was an especially busy one for me, and so, I did not prepare a handout. Thankfully, though, we do have a video recording of the event.
The Holy rosary
Although I have found the Holy Rosary to be an invaluable spiritual aid, I don't often follow the most traditional forms of the Rosary in all of its details. And you can see here, that when I tried to teach that most traditional form, I got snagged up on a detail or two. Still, I believe this was our most popular class of the whole series, and I am grateful to hope that in our time together, we found new and useful ways of living into our lives in prayer.
rosaryhistory.pdf | |
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rosaryhowto.pdf | |
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multi-session courses
Following are materials that I prepared for a couple of the multi-session courses that I have led through during my time at St. John's Charlotte.
faith, pain, and divine responsibility: a study of Job
Following are materials which I prepared for a Lenten Bible Study on Job. The purpose and main focus of the study is the exploration of the subject which theologians call "theodicy,' or to put it more commonly, the question of why "Why do bad things happen to good people," to borrow from Rabbi Kuchner's enormously successful book on on the same subject. Indeed, in this course, I have strongly recommended that our student participants read the Rabbi's new book on Job, titled, The Book of Job: When Bad Things Happen to a Good Person, as a companion.
The course materials presented here are exactly as we used them at St. John's. They originated as an assignment which I prepared for an Old Testament class in Seminary, with an emphasis on exploring ways by which we, as seminarians, might make our seminary studies relevant to the Teaching Offices of our chosen Vocations in the Priesthood. I modified the materials somewhat, but not extensively, for this course.
Although I am generally happy with the way the materials and the course worked out, if I were to do this again, I would edit the workbook significantly, either by highlighting the most relevant verses in the poetic chapters which comprise the bulk of the book, or by excising the other and more repetitive or redundant ones, in order to make the overall dialogues that are contained in these many and lengthy chapters more accessible and memorable, with the consolation certainly that participants can always access the scriptures in their complete form on their own.
These materials are in PDF, or Portable Document Format, form.
The course materials presented here are exactly as we used them at St. John's. They originated as an assignment which I prepared for an Old Testament class in Seminary, with an emphasis on exploring ways by which we, as seminarians, might make our seminary studies relevant to the Teaching Offices of our chosen Vocations in the Priesthood. I modified the materials somewhat, but not extensively, for this course.
Although I am generally happy with the way the materials and the course worked out, if I were to do this again, I would edit the workbook significantly, either by highlighting the most relevant verses in the poetic chapters which comprise the bulk of the book, or by excising the other and more repetitive or redundant ones, in order to make the overall dialogues that are contained in these many and lengthy chapters more accessible and memorable, with the consolation certainly that participants can always access the scriptures in their complete form on their own.
These materials are in PDF, or Portable Document Format, form.
Job Class Work Book | |
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Job Class Instructor's Guide | |
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THE HISTORY OF THE CHURCH AND ITS LITURGY
I prepared the documents below to serve at once as course advertisements and outlines for parishioners at St. John's Church in Charlotte who have attended at least some of the classes which I have offered there, or who otherwise might be interested in the issues which we discussed. Unlike the course proposed above, I have planned and led these courses in a rather informal fashion, in keeping with the amount of time and energy which I could reasonably give to these projects, given the obligations of my full-time position on the Faculty of Michigan State University, and my own estimations and experiences of the preferences and the requirements both of the students and the Congregation more generally. Indeed, I developed and revised some of these materials while the courses were underway.
The Christian Church in Late Antiquity | |
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Christian Worship in Late Antiquity | |
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Liturgy in the Age of Christendom | |
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