Lenten Adult Forum Series: Sabbath: Making Time Holy

As part of our Lenten sabbath observance, during adult forum, we’ll be offering resources and ideas for finding more sabbath time in your life. Each forum is a stand-alone, so you can drop into whatever topic fits your needs and interests. 

March 1: Craft as Prayer – Making Prayer Beads
Crafting and using our hands is a wonderful way to slow down and spend time with God and ourselves. Beads have been used as a tactile and
contemplative way to pray for many centuries. This week, we’ll have a
chance to engage in hands-on prayer by making Anglican prayer beads.
Beading materials, as well as a booklet on how to pray with Anglican prayer
beads, will be provided.

March 8: Contemplative Practices with Bethany House of Prayer
Bethany House of Prayer is an Episcopal contemplative center just 3 miles from Redeemer. They offer wonderful workshops and retreats. This week, Bethany House comes to us as Robert  L’Esperance and Luke Abdow of Bethany House lead us in three contemplative practices: chant, meditation, and Lectio divina or holy reading. 

March 15: Digital Minimalism
We all talk about how we spend too much time on screens, but how can we make the screens serve us, rather than the other way around? In his book Digital Minimalism, Cal Newport outlines a way of building your own personal screen-use policy based on your spiritual and moral values. This forum will be a discussion of Newport’s book — if you’ve read it, great, if not, come anyway and we’ll talk about reclaiming our time in today’s attention economy. 

March 22: Look Up Live
Look Up Live is a local nonprofit that seeks to empower youth to reverse the negative effects of digital overload, find balance and to embrace the joy of simply being human. Founder Kevin Wells (friend of our own Lee Noel Chase) will share what they are learning from the young entrepreneurs they partner with to help us all live a more balanced life. 

March 29: Walking Towards Holy Week
Holy Week is the most important week of the Christian year when Christians pause from their regular weekly activities to be part of the special services of Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and the Easter Vigil. During this time, we walk in the footsteps of Jesus during his Passion, the last days of his earthly life. John’s Passion Gospel is at the heart of all of our worship services in Holy Week. In this forum, we’ll take a deep dive into the Passion Gospel, unpacking it so we can really understand these special services and what they mean for us. 

April 5: Meet your Prayer Partner
As part of our Lent this year, we are having Prayer Partnerships where Redeemer members pray for each other. While each person, of course, knows who they are praying for, they don’t know who is praying for them. At this forum, our prayer partners will be revealed. We’ll also have a chance to process our experience of prayer during Lent and talk about what it was like to pray for another and be prayed for ourselves.