The Old Testament Reads You...

This January the Presbytery of San Francisco will be offering an Old Testament class at it's new Education Center. The class is an introduction class taught by our marvelous teacher, Dr. Carol Miles. Carol is an outstanding ding teacher who has taught at Austin and Luther Theological Seminaries. Carol has a way of helping students understand scripture in new and exciting ways. As a homiletic's (preaching) professor Carol helps make Scripture practical for life and for teaching. So if you are a teacher in the church, a pastor who would like to remember again how the text captures us, or just a Christians who wants to dig deeper into the text, come join us in class in the new year.

The class is will be held on Friday night (7:00-10:00pm) and Saturday (8:30am-3:30pm) January 25-26, 2013. The class only cost $60 for credit* and $30 for auditors. You can download a Syllabus here.

*If you take the class for credit you will get more out of the class by doing all the assigned class readings and paper but the class will also count towards the requirements for the Commissioned Lay Pastor programs required classes.

Meet the members of the Presbytery Education Centers Program Working Group

At the beginning of this year the Leadership Council voted to form a new working group for the purpose of developing a program for our Commission Lay Pastor (CLP) training and overseeing the work of our new Education Center (which they also voted to birth at the same meeting).

This Working Group has been meeting since last January in organizing the the CLP program and other educational projects at the new center. We thought you might like to know who these hard working folks are. We hope you will get to know these folks as they work with your churches in the process of "equipping" all you saints out there!

The member of the Education Center Program Working Group are:

Rev. Pablo Morataya

Rev. Carmen Rosales

Elder Saul Chacon, CLP

Elder Enicia Montalvo, CLP

Rev. Laurie Garrett-Cobina

Rev. Max Lynn

Rev. Tici Truly

Rev. Bill Azbell

Elder Karl Gerlach, CLP

Susan Hunn (Secretary)

Rev. Jim Wheeler (Chair)

      Elder David Morales (Redwoods Presbytery)

Rev. Karl Shadley (CLP coordinator, Staff)

What can the Education Center do for your Church?

Each Saturday as many as 60 students gather at the Presbytery's Education Center to take classes in Theology, Bible, counseling, worship and preaching, Presbyterian polity, music, christian nurture, pastoral care, and many other subjects. These classes are taught in both Spanish and English.

 At lunch time everyone gathers for a shared lunch prepared by Julio and his assistants.

The idea behind the Education Center is to be a educational resource to all our churches as we prepare to serve our communities.

Do you have a class you would like to take?

• How about a class for new elders on Presbyterian polity?  
• How about a class in pastoral care for your deacons 
• How about a class for those teaching Sunday school or running your youth programs? 

This is what we are about at the Education Center, helping to educate the folks in our churches to serve, grow and become the leaders they had hoped to be.

 Do you have an idea for a class. If you do, give us a call or post a comment to our blog post.

                  Our Reformed Theology class taught by Dr. Gregory Love

Education Center Creek Restoration Project

Over the Veteran's Day Weekend Two Youth Groups, one from West Sacramento and one from Berkeley joined together to start a "Heal the Earth" Mission project at the San Francisco Presbytery's Education Center. For many, many years this little creek as been ignored but now, with the help of "The Friends of the Five Creek" and the youth groups of Trinity Pres. and Calvary Pres. it is being restored to it's wonderful natural state for all to enjoy.