Christian Education

The Christian Education Committee invites you and your family to join us in one of the educational programs available. Both Adult and Youth classes are offered at 9 AM Sunday Mornings.

Children in Kindergarten through 2nd grade are once again using a curriculum called "Godly Play", a multi-sensory approach to teach children the art of using religious language - parable, sacred story, silence, and liturgical action - to help them become more fully aware of the mystery of God's presence in their lives.

"Godly Play" was so well received by the younger classes, that a new Godly Play classroom has been created for children in Grades 3 through 5. In Godly Play, children are not taught standard lessons, but rather listen to a storyteller tell a bible story or a parable and then are asked "wondering questions" about the story. There are no right or wrong answers to these questions, but rather they are the personal interpretations of the story as it affects the child's own life. In this way, the children not only learn the Bible story, but also see that the Bible isn't something that happened thousands of years ago, but it still applies today.

In our third year of use of this dynamic curriculum, we have now been expanded Godly Play into the middle school (grades 6-8) level with great success!

Our high school class (9th-12th) is using Bible Lessons for Youth, a scripture-based United Methodist Curriculum. The Fall 2004 sessions focus on Creation.

Adults meet from 9-10 a.m. each Sunday from September through June to explore faith issues and Bible studies. Six to eight week studies are presented by members of the class. Topics have included Robert Brumet's Finding Yourself in Transition, We Are United Methodists, Liz Curtis Higgs' Bad Girls of the Bible and Philip Yancey's The Bible Jesus Read.

Children of all ages attend Worship Service at 10:30 AM with their parents and are called to the altar for the Children's Message during the service.

Students in grade 3 and older can also participate as acolytes and/or sing in the Carol Choir during the worship service .

First United Methodist Church also is fortunate to have a very active middle/high school United Methodist Youth Fellowship. They meet on Saturday evenings each week. They engage in a variety of disciple-making activities including service projects (visiting church members who live in local nursing homes, baking cookies for shut-ins, baking breads for Harvest Table guests) and Bible study. Fellowship opportunities include a New Year's Eve retreat at the church and a wealth and poverty retreat in Newport RI. The UMYF is engaged in active fundraising for local and global mission projects as well as fundraising to defray the expense of fellowship activities.

Souper Bowl Sunday 2003 On February 1, 2003, the UMYF collected $101 for the Christian Center, a local ecumenical social service agency.

30-hour Famine 2003 Our UMYF participated in the national 30 Hour Famine sponsored by World Vision to raise money for and awareness of world hunger. The youth engaged in a number of activities including a supermarket scavenger hunt to see how much food they could purchase for our food pantry with $15. They also made 2,900 loops of paper chain with each loop representing 10 of the 29,000 children who die each day of hunger or hunger-related disease.

For more information about any of these programs, please call the church at 413-499-0866 and ask for the Director of Christian Education.