Adult Faith Formation

The Lenten Adult Faith Formation is a weekly study on the Lord’s Prayer.  There are two opportunities for you to attend the Lenten Study: Wednesday evenings or Sunday mornings.

Why “adult faith formation” and not “adult education?”  Author Diana Butler Bass notes “too often the word, education, carries the connotation of information or expertise.  Adult formation does educate, but it also engages the whole person – intellect, passions, and spirit – in a process and practice of Christian maturity.  It seeks to form or shape a meaningful way of being Christian and putting Christian faith into practice in the world.” 

Reflections on the Lord's Prayer: A Lenten Study 

Do you remember the first time you heard the Lord’s Prayer? Most of us not only can’t remember when we first heard this prayer, we can’t remember when we memorized it—because our memorizing was not a conscious effort; it was simply the process of hearing the words until they were part of our very persons.

Yet most of us don’t know much about this prayer, and we’re inclined to recite it without thinking. Because we say it so often and because its words have the flow of poetry, we are likely to speak it without utilizing either the mind or heart.

Lent is an appropriate time to consider the prayer Jesus taught us to pray in a careful way. Each session concentrates on a major theme or phrase of the prayer in the hope that we will be renewed in our reflections during Lent and intentional as we pray this familiar prayer.

In truth, if through our time of study we are caused to think as we speak this prayer, it may that we are loving God with our minds as well as with rote emotions. And if by our study some familiar phrase comes to have enlarged and more significant meaning, that will be a still greater gain.

Materials from “The Thoughtful Christian”

photos by Ed Champa