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David, I think that Dear Kim is an excellent book for
Confirmation classes. My suggestion is that you have a look at it yourself. It
is only about 40 pages so it is not incredibly wordy.
Allan
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Thursday, March 04, 2004 3:50
PM
Subject: Fw: Church Membership -
Course
Any good for the confirmation classes our church will begin
in 2 months time? Or is there something better we could use for our 16-22 year
olds and 6 weeks?
David
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Thursday, March 04, 2004 12:03 PM
Subject: Re: Church Membership - Course
Greetings all.
I would like to put in a plug for Bill Loader's book: "Dear
Kim; This is what I believe" as an excellent resource/discussion book for
talking with interested people about faith and membership of the church. It is
the best and simplest book explaining Christian faith in a sensible way I have
read and it is available free from Bill's website.
Hope this helps.
Allan
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Thursday, March 04, 2004 9:57
AM
Subject: RE: Church Membership -
Course
G'day All,
Anne Ryan (forget her UC title but she is
based in Newcastle) ran a course in this part of the world (New
England-North West) last year that might be compatible with what Terence
suggests.
'A Place to Start' deals with basic
issues of Christian history, theology and doctrine. I think Anne put
it together herself. Unfortunately I was unable to attend any of the
sessions (5 or 6 I think) but got good reports.
Kind
regards,
Lindsay Brash.
At 08:05 AM 4/03/04 +1100, Terence
wrote:
Hi Tom,
There is
provision for the receiving of members on transfer - it is
regulation
1.1.21
It will be necessary to satisfy oneself locally that a
person has been a
member of another denomination. However there is no
hard and fast rule on
this although some sort of certificate is usually
available.
Now to the important part. I believe that it is vitally
inportant that some
sort of orientation / induction process take place
prior to making a
decision about accepting the person into membership.
In fact I think it
would be better to do it even before a formal
request is considered ie for
people who are thinking about transfering
to the UCA. This process can be
used to encourage disciplines of the
faith but (given the current times) to
also work on their understanding
of the privileges and limitations of the
congregation. Yes I am talking
about polity / ethos lessons.
Perhaps what we need at this time are
opportunities all over the country for
people to meet and be led in
thinking about what kind of the church the UCA
is. Why is it that the
Assembly believes we can / should have room for
individual conscience
on important matters? What does that say about the
kind of open /
respectful / humble community of faith we seek to be? This
can provide
a great opportunity to bring people together across the
congregation to
talk about what they value about the UCA. It can be a time
of creating
/ naming images that can sustain people in the fellowship of
the
Uniting Church.
Something like a short series for people
being received on transfer could be
a marvellous vehicle through which
we articulate the vision of what it means
to be the UCA. That is
certainly what we need at this time - an identity
that is not defined
by doctrinal purity but more by the quality of our
relationship with
Jesus Christ and how much we show that character in our
relationships
with others.
Just a thought.
Terence
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