Studies & Book Clubs

For the Fellowship Class, at the conclusion of Pastor Lew’s wonderful study of ‘Heaven, Hell, Points Between,’ we will turn to the Gospel of Mark. This book is considered by many, if not most biblical scholars as the first of the four Gospels to be written. With his repeated use of the word ‘immediately’ and focus on the actions of Jesus, Mark is an Evangelist in a hurry. The opening verse of the book sets the tone: ‘The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, Son of God’ (Mk 1:1). We’ll begin our journey through Mark on Oct. 8th in the Social Hall.

The winter sessions of bible studies will begin the week of Jan. 12th and continue for ten weeks. As usual, we will meet on Monday nights from 6:30-8:00 pm or on Tuesday mornings from 9:00-10:30 am. The meeting place has yet to be established. Each session will be available on Zoom.

The title of the study is "Jesus, Jerusalem, and the Gospel of John." Unlike Matthew, Mark, and Luke–who only report the adult Jesus being in Jerusalem once–John tells us that Jesus visited the Holy City at least five times, namely, for three Passovers, one Hanukkah, and one other unnamed festival. This is a very different perspective on the life of Jesus, and one well worth our time and study. No matter where each of us is on our spiritual journey, the Gospel of John has much to offer us.

Please consider joining us on the 12th or the 13th of January as we travel the road from Galilee to Jerusalem with Jesus.

Next meeting TBA

Pastor Jenn is hosting a book club this year featuring books that have been labeled as thought-provoking, including some award-winning titles. We will read the books each month, then gather to discuss them and consider what lessons they offer, what new thoughts and experiences we were not aware of, and where God and religion are in them.

Given the topics, this club is open to young adults and older, but all genders. Meetings will be the last Thursday of the month in Room 203 from 6:30 pm-8 pm, except the November/December reading will meet on December 11th. For those who cannot attend in person, a Zoom link will be provided. If you know of someone who might enjoy joining us, please invite them.

Here are the books we will be reading. 3 copies of each book are available outside of the church office, on the top shelf of the mail slots so you can begin reading now. Please bring back when you are finished so someone else can read them too.

Spanning the years 1900 to 1977, The Covenant of Water is set in Kerala, on India’s Malabar Coast, and follows three generations of a family that suffers a peculiar affliction: in every generation, at least one person dies by drowning—and in Kerala, water is everywhere. At the turn of the century, a twelve-year-old girl from Kerala's Christian community, grieving the death of her father, is sent by boat to her wedding, where she will meet her forty-year-old husband for the first time. From this unforgettable new beginning, the young girl—and future matriarch, Big Ammachi—will witness unthinkable changes over the span of her extraordinary life, full of joy and triumph as well as hardship and loss, her faith and love the only constant.

The December 11th meeting will discuss the first 5 sections only. The rest will be discussed in January.

When Nora Seed finds herself in the Midnight Library, she has a chance to make things right. Up until now, her life has been full of misery and regret. She feels she has let everyone down, including herself. But things are about to change.
 
The books in the Midnight Library enable Nora to live as if she had done things differently. With the help of an old friend, she can now undo every one of her regrets as she tries to work out her perfect life. But things aren't always what she imagined they'd be, and soon her choices place the library and herself in extreme danger.
 
Before time runs out, she must answer the ultimate question: what is the best way to live?

Few people beyond South Carolina’s Lowcountry knew of Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston—Mother Emanuel—before the night of June 17, 2015, when a twenty-one-year-old white supremacist walked into Bible study and slaughtered the church’s charismatic pastor and eight worshippers. Although the shooter had targeted the first AME church in the South in order to agitate racial strife, he did not anticipate the aftermath—an outpouring of forgiveness from the victims’ families and a reckoning with the divisions of caste that have afflicted Charleston and the South since the earliest days of European settlement.

Pastor Lew will be joining us for the discussion that night. He knew the pastor, Clementa, who was killed. He was working on a DMin project with Clementa regarding faith and politics. 

March 26th: Flux by Jinwoo Chong

Combining elements of neo-noir, speculative fiction, and '80s detective shows, FLUX is a haunting and sometimes shocking exploration of the cyclical nature of grief, of moving past trauma, and of the pervasive nature of whiteness within the development of Asian identity in America.

In FLUX, a brilliant debut in the vein of William Gibson’s Neuromancer and Ling Ma’s Severance, Jinwoo Chong introduces us to three characters —Bo, Brandon and Blue— who are tortured by these questions as their lives spin out of control.

* After 8-year-old Bo loses his mother in a tragic accident, his white father, attempting to hold their lives together, begins to gradually retreat from the family.

* 28-year-old Brandon loses his job at a legacy magazine publisher and is offered a new position. Confused to find himself in an apartment he does not recognize, and an office he sometimes cannot remember leaving, he comes to suspect that something far more sinister is happening behind the walls.

* 48-year-old Blue participates in a television exposé of Flux, a failed bioelectric tech startup whose fraudulent activity eventually claimed the lives of three people and nearly killed him. Blue, who can only speak with the aid of cybernetic implants, stalks his old manager while holding his estranged family at arms-length.

Intertwined with the saga of a once-iconic '80s detective show, Raider, whose star has fallen after decades of concealed abuse, the lives of Bo, Brandon and Blue intersect with each other, to the extent that it becomes clear that their lives are more interconnected and interdependent than the reader could have ever imagined.
 
Can we ever really change the past, or the future? What truth do we owe our families? What truth do we owe ourselves? 

After Tova Sullivan's husband died, she began working the night shift at the Sowell Bay Aquarium, mopping floors and tidying up. Keeping busy has always helped her cope, which she's been doing since her eighteen-year-old son, Erik, mysteriously vanished on a boat in Puget Sound over thirty years ago.
 
Tova becomes acquainted with curmudgeonly Marcellus, a giant Pacific octopus living at the aquarium. Marcellus knows more than anyone can imagine but wouldn't dream of lifting one of his eight arms for his human captors--until he forms a remarkable friendship with Tova.
 
Ever the detective, Marcellus deduces what happened the night Tova's son disappeared. And now Marcellus must use every trick his old invertebrate body can muster to unearth the truth for her before it's too late.
 
Shelby Van Pelt's debut novel is a gentle reminder that sometimes taking a hard look at the past can help uncover a future that once felt impossible.