Being Friends with God (Sun. 9/13/09)

Dear Friends,

This Sunday will be the start of St. Andrew's Church School program! The Church School Committee, and Susan and Steve Killeen have been working hard to get all the curriculum, classrooms, and other materials set to begin the year. Please be sure to thank them as you see them around this month.


A few brief logistical reminders for Sunday:
1) Take attendance! (Toddler Room, please record names by hand.)

2) Collect registration forms from parents
(just because they are on the list does NOT mean we have their form).

3) Plan to attend the Teacher Training from 11:30 to 12:30 in room 2
(lunch and childcare provided.)

4) Please remember to photograph each child and teacher with the camera in your room.

5) Don't forget to say an opening and closing prayer with the kids.


Friendship with God
The loose theme of our Church School year is "Friendship with God," and the special first Sunday activities relate to that theme. It's easy for our practice of Christianity to become conflated with doing the right thing (and particularly easy when we have to explain a faith based in mystery to children!). While doing the right thing is an important part of our faith, our good actions are the result of our faith, not the thing itself. At the core of spirituality is developing and nurturing a friendship with God: spending time with God, feeling loved by God, offering love back to God, experience God's presence in your life as affirming rather than condemning. And at the core of Christianity is finding that friendship with God through our friendship with Jesus. In church we have many good names for Jesus: Lord, Savior, Son of God...but we often forget to call Jesus our friend, our brother, our fellow human being. Becoming better friends with Jesus, means knowing him more fully -- not just as fully divine, but also as fully human, full of empathy and therefore able to be our friend.

The lessons that Susan has wonderfully designed for our elementary school classrooms begin to introduce the idea of friendship with Jesus. I encourage you, as you teach on Sunday, to explore that theme with your classes as fully as you can. What makes a good friend? What things to you like best about your friends? What would it have been like to have been Jesus' friend back when he was on earth? What kind of friend would Jesus have been? Would he have been funny or silly? What would it be like if Jesus was your friend today, in Wellesley?!? (guess what, he is!!!). If you invited him over for a play date, what would you do? No doubt there will be times to return to this theme throughout the year, and this week's lesson offers this theme as a gift to our kids.

And as you prepare to teach this Sunday, you might think for a moment about your own friendship with God. Does knowing God enhance your enjoyment and appreciation of life? If so, how? If not, what is getting in the way of that? Maybe there are parts of your relationship that have yet to be discovered. Do you trust each other -- that is, not only do you trust God, but do you think that God trusts you? As a wise preacher once said, "God's grace is freely given to us, to give us freedom." Our friendship with God is a free gift offered to help us feel more free, not more constrained. What a present indeed.

Well, we're off and running! Thanks for your dedication to taking on this ministry, and my prayer for you is that through the experience of teaching in this community, your friendship with God will grow deeper over the course of this year.



Many blessings,
Chris