At St. Paul, education is for everyone. Prior to the Pandemic, our Adult Education was centered around our Wednesday Night Program: dinner for everyone in our fellowship hall, followed by separate programs for adults and children. Scroll down the page for some highlights from last year.

WOMEN’S RETREAT

Every fall we organize a Women’s Retreat over a weekend at a nearby retreat center. In 2019 we met San Damiano in Danville to discuss The Divine Feminine. We hope to be back in 2023!

The Book Group

We began offline in December 2019 and January 2020 with a discussion of a book written just for us (actually for the ELCA, our parent church body): Pastor Lenny Duncan’s Dear Church: A Love-Letter from a Black Preacher to the Whitest Denomination in the U.S.

We moved online at the end of March 2020, just a few weeks after the lock down began. Barbara Brown Taylor’s Learning to Walk in the Dark was an important guide for a difficult time. Trying to understand some of the challenges Christianity is facing today, we turned to Diana Butler Bass’s Christianity for the Rest of Us: How the Neighborhood Church is Transforming the Faith. Then it was back to Pastor Duncan to share Dear Church with members who had not had the chance to read it.

Shaken by the murder of George Floyd, in June we began a focus on books that we felt might deepen our understanding of the racism and oppression suffered by African Americans:

• Jennifer Harvey, Dear White Christians: For Those Still Longing for Racial Reconciliation
• Colson Whitehead, The Underground Railroad
• Richard Rothstein, The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America
• John Lewis (with Michael D’Orso), Walking with the Wind: A Memoir of the Movement
• Brit Bennett, The Vanishing Half
• Nella Larsen, Passing
• Carl L. Hart, High Price: A Neuroscientist’s Journey of Self-Discovery That Challenges Everything You Know About Drugs and Society

In the fall of 2021, we began to broaden our reading about racial discrimination in America, turning to books that we hope will give us insight into some of the experiences of Native Americans and Asian Americans/Pacific Islanders. Our recent books have included:

• Ocean Vuong, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous: A Novel
• David Treuer, The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee: Native America from 1890 to the Present

See the St. Paul calendar for more information about meeting times. The link to join the program is here. You can find our current reading schedule in our newsletter. For more information, please contact our moderator, Stephanie Oana.
Please join us!

THEOLOGICAL THINK TANK THURSDAYS

Gary Pence, retired professor of the Pacific Lutheran Theological Seminary in Berkeley, leads a free-wheeling discussion on Thursday evenings called Theological Think Tank. No curriculum, no plan, no structure. Each week the group picks the topic for the next week. Sometimes Gary leads the group through engaging questions; sometimes the discussion moves wherever the group takes it. All thoughts and ideas, however unconventional, are welcome – Gary will give the ELCA’s official position but that is always open to questioning by participants. No conclusions, just great topics and mind-opening conversations.

Previous topics: Bible; Life beyond death; God; Sacraments; Unitarian-Universalism; Prayer; Job; Early Christian writings that didn’t make it into the canon: Pharisees and early Christian community’s attitude toward Jews; Virgin birth; Mary-Mother of Jesus; Devil and the demonic; Luther’s Small Catechism; Sharing our faith; Types of biblical interpretation; Dostoevsky’s “The Grand Inquisitor;” Heaven; Eastern Orthodoxy and the great schism with the Western church; Predestination/election; Baptism; Lent; Does God tempt/test us; Atonement theories—why did Jesus die on the cross; Theology of hymns in our hymnal; Holy Week; Death and dying; End-of-life decision; Physician assisted suicide; What happens after we die?; Forgiveness and the unforgivable; Reconciliation, repentance, reparation

See the St. Paul calendar for more information about meeting times. The link to join the program is here. For more information, please contact the church office.

WEDNESDAY NIGHT PROGRAMs resumed in early 2023 with monthly gatherings!

The evening begins at 6pm with a prepared meal. The program runs 6:45-7:30pm. Check the calendar for meeting dates.

The Wednesday Night Program was off to a great start in 2019-20. After shutting down in March 2020, the Wednesday Night Program started up again on Zoom in the fall of 2021. Recent programs have included:

• A program on Death & Dying, presented by Airalee Studley, Life & Relationship Coach/Death Doula
• Immigration and the Bible, led by Vicar Paul
• Exploring the Enneagram, taught by Jacinta Sutpin
• Marian Apparitions (Appearances of Mary) and related art, led by Pastor Holly
• Thriving beyond Covid, a series of reflections and Bible studies, led by Pastor Holly

See the St. Paul calendar for more information about meeting times. You can information about upcoming programs in our newsletter. The link to join the program is here.