St. Bart’s Adult Education Series
Recent Programs
Adult Education Sessions for Lent 2022
During the Season of Lent, a four-week session in March was led by Rob Neal based on audio recordings by Clarence Jordan of his lectures Power from Parables. Clarence Jordan was the founder of Koinonia Farms in Americus, GA, in the early 1940s. Koinonia continues to exist today and is a multi-racial, non-violent Christian community. Habitat for Humanity began at Koinonia Farms in the early 1970s under the leadership of Millard Fuller, who considered Clarence Jordan his mentor and the most influential person in his life.
The Power from Parables lectures are from a series presented by Clarence Jordan at Union Theological Seminary in 1968. The lectures explore why Jesus used parables rather than direct, literal lessons in his teaching. Jordan uses biblical scholarship, history, humor, and passion to convey his sense of the powerful way Jesus used parables to influence his disciples and other followers in his time. These lectures were among the last works of Clarence Jordan—a farmer and Baptist minister who earned a master’s degree in theology and a doctorate in New Testament Greek from Southern Baptist Seminary (Louisville, KY)—before his death in the Fall of 1969.
Details on access to the audio recordings—each approximately eighteen to forty minutes long—were provided in separate announcements. Each week’s class focused on sharing the impact of listening to these recordings and their relevance for us, our church, and the Christian community overall. The presenter, Rob Neal, lived at Koinonia Farms for two periods in the 1970s.
The Lent series was held on four consecutive Sundays, starting March 6th from 1:30PM to 3:00PM. You can contact Rob at rtneal@gmail.com for further information.
Epiphany 2022
During the season of Epiphany 2022, the Adult Education Committee presented four Sunday afternoon ZOOM sessions on the topic Something to Follow: Modern Poets and the Epiphany.
The discussions focused on prior readings of poems by modern poets and their response to the very simple biblical Epiphany narratives (Matt. 2.1-12 and 2.8-20) and a variety of cultural traditions that coalesce around the themes of the journey toward faith, the experience of precarious promise, and ongoing experience of mortality and transcendence implicit in those stories and traditions. Each session will open with a brief talk about the background of the writers and their poems, with related visual works, by Stephen Hahn, and follow with a discussion of questions and responses. One or more of the sessions will include a brief video sidelight to the discussion. The calendar of sessions is:
January 9, 3:00 p.m. Poems by W. H. Auden and William Carlos Williams, with pictures from Pieter Brueghel the elder and Stanley Spencer.
January 23, 3:00 p.m. Poems by T.S. Eliot and Antonio Machado, with a poem by Ruben Dario and a video about a Guatemalan refugee artist and public health counselor Emilio Aponte-Siera.
February 6, 3:00 p.m. In celebration of African American History Month, we studied poems by Langston Hughes, Lucille Clifton, and Ashley Bryan, including illustrations to Hughes’s Carol of the Brown King by Ashley Bryan and Bryan’s own Who Built the Stable?
February 20, 3:00 p.m. Poems by two American poets—Denise Levertov and Joseph Brodsky—who hearken to Eastern European traditions that are part of their lineage and to Boris Pasternak in a poem out of Cold War Russia titled “Star of the Nativity.” Reading of these poems was accompanied by a look at early fifteenth century Russian icons of the Nativity attributed to Andrei Rublev and twentieth century paintings by Marc Chagall.
For details on how to access readings and images for this series: contact Stephen Hahn at hahns@wpunj.edu if you are interested.
Advent Series 2021
Beginning with the inaugural meeting of the 2021-2022 Adult Education Program Discussions, Elizabeth Ring presented the first in a series on the biblical figure of Mary and her spiritual sisters from the Hebrew Bible, Miriam and Hannah:
Scholars and theologians are increasingly providing us with information about the world that Jesus was born into. We know a little about it from the nativity narratives and a smattering of insights into the politics of the Roman Empire. Recently, General Theological Seminary hosted a webinar by the Rev. Dr. Julie Faith Parker: Magnificent, Marxist, Mary: Textual Light on Advent’s Brightest Star. The presentation seeks to dispel images of Mary as “meek” and “mild” and replace them with understandings of a brave, radical teenage girl. Exploring stories of Mary’s spiritual sisters from the Hebrew Bible, Miriam and Hannah, leads us to appreciate Mary’s courage and theology.” I hope all participants will take the time to watch this before our first meeting and begin to reflect on their picture of Mary. The URL to access the lecture (which is free, but requires simple registration via your email address) is:
https://www.gts.edu/upcoming-events/magnificent-marxist-mary-textual-light-on-advents-brightest-star/
Explore the complexity of Mary and the women who formed and influenced her. –Elizabeth Ring
Adult Education Committee Chair
Stephen Hahn
Email: hahns@wpunj.edu.
Recent Programs
Adult Education Sessions for Lent 2022
During the Season of Lent, a four-week session in March was led by Rob Neal based on audio recordings by Clarence Jordan of his lectures Power from Parables. Clarence Jordan was the founder of Koinonia Farms in Americus, GA, in the early 1940s. Koinonia continues to exist today and is a multi-racial, non-violent Christian community. Habitat for Humanity began at Koinonia Farms in the early 1970s under the leadership of Millard Fuller, who considered Clarence Jordan his mentor and the most influential person in his life.
The Power from Parables lectures are from a series presented by Clarence Jordan at Union Theological Seminary in 1968. The lectures explore why Jesus used parables rather than direct, literal lessons in his teaching. Jordan uses biblical scholarship, history, humor, and passion to convey his sense of the powerful way Jesus used parables to influence his disciples and other followers in his time. These lectures were among the last works of Clarence Jordan—a farmer and Baptist minister who earned a master’s degree in theology and a doctorate in New Testament Greek from Southern Baptist Seminary (Louisville, KY)—before his death in the Fall of 1969.
Details on access to the audio recordings—each approximately eighteen to forty minutes long—were provided in separate announcements. Each week’s class focused on sharing the impact of listening to these recordings and their relevance for us, our church, and the Christian community overall. The presenter, Rob Neal, lived at Koinonia Farms for two periods in the 1970s.
The Lent series was held on four consecutive Sundays, starting March 6th from 1:30PM to 3:00PM. You can contact Rob at rtneal@gmail.com for further information.
Epiphany 2022
During the season of Epiphany 2022, the Adult Education Committee presented four Sunday afternoon ZOOM sessions on the topic Something to Follow: Modern Poets and the Epiphany.
The discussions focused on prior readings of poems by modern poets and their response to the very simple biblical Epiphany narratives (Matt. 2.1-12 and 2.8-20) and a variety of cultural traditions that coalesce around the themes of the journey toward faith, the experience of precarious promise, and ongoing experience of mortality and transcendence implicit in those stories and traditions. Each session will open with a brief talk about the background of the writers and their poems, with related visual works, by Stephen Hahn, and follow with a discussion of questions and responses. One or more of the sessions will include a brief video sidelight to the discussion. The calendar of sessions is:
January 9, 3:00 p.m. Poems by W. H. Auden and William Carlos Williams, with pictures from Pieter Brueghel the elder and Stanley Spencer.
January 23, 3:00 p.m. Poems by T.S. Eliot and Antonio Machado, with a poem by Ruben Dario and a video about a Guatemalan refugee artist and public health counselor Emilio Aponte-Siera.
February 6, 3:00 p.m. In celebration of African American History Month, we studied poems by Langston Hughes, Lucille Clifton, and Ashley Bryan, including illustrations to Hughes’s Carol of the Brown King by Ashley Bryan and Bryan’s own Who Built the Stable?
February 20, 3:00 p.m. Poems by two American poets—Denise Levertov and Joseph Brodsky—who hearken to Eastern European traditions that are part of their lineage and to Boris Pasternak in a poem out of Cold War Russia titled “Star of the Nativity.” Reading of these poems was accompanied by a look at early fifteenth century Russian icons of the Nativity attributed to Andrei Rublev and twentieth century paintings by Marc Chagall.
For details on how to access readings and images for this series: contact Stephen Hahn at hahns@wpunj.edu if you are interested.
Advent Series 2021
Beginning with the inaugural meeting of the 2021-2022 Adult Education Program Discussions, Elizabeth Ring presented the first in a series on the biblical figure of Mary and her spiritual sisters from the Hebrew Bible, Miriam and Hannah:
Scholars and theologians are increasingly providing us with information about the world that Jesus was born into. We know a little about it from the nativity narratives and a smattering of insights into the politics of the Roman Empire. Recently, General Theological Seminary hosted a webinar by the Rev. Dr. Julie Faith Parker: Magnificent, Marxist, Mary: Textual Light on Advent’s Brightest Star. The presentation seeks to dispel images of Mary as “meek” and “mild” and replace them with understandings of a brave, radical teenage girl. Exploring stories of Mary’s spiritual sisters from the Hebrew Bible, Miriam and Hannah, leads us to appreciate Mary’s courage and theology.” I hope all participants will take the time to watch this before our first meeting and begin to reflect on their picture of Mary. The URL to access the lecture (which is free, but requires simple registration via your email address) is:
https://www.gts.edu/upcoming-events/magnificent-marxist-mary-textual-light-on-advents-brightest-star/
Explore the complexity of Mary and the women who formed and influenced her. –Elizabeth Ring
Adult Education Committee Chair
Stephen Hahn
Email: hahns@wpunj.edu.
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