Adult Spiritual Formation
Spiritual formation is a lifelong commitment — which means it matters every day of our lives, all throughout our lives. Spiritual formation is not just for children and youth. It is also for adults, calling for ongoing nurture. We believe spiritual formation is rooted in the biblical, theological, and spiritual soil of the faith traditions of the church. From this soil, branch into the world by putting our faith into practice.
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All adults are invited to renew their commitment to their own spiritual formaion by growing deep and growing forth. Grow deep by cultivating the roots of your faith. Grow forth by cultivating the way you branch out from FCC to share the fruits of your faith with a world crying out for good news. Grow because your life will be fuller for it. Grow because the children and youth of FCC will be less likely to take their own Christian formation seriously if we adults don’t take ours seriously.
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CURRENT OPPORTUNITIES
Wednesday Morning Bible Study
Meets weekly on Wednesdays at 10 am in the Family Room, studying the texts for the upcoming Sunday. Facilitated by Betsy Hanzelin. All are welcome!
Book Discussion Group
Meets periodically throughout the year, after church in the Parlor.
Trina Hayes, facilitates and chooses books that spark the imagination and challenge us to think in different ways about topics that are in line with what is happening in our complicated world today.
December 10, 2023
"The Music of Bees" by Eileen Garvin, Alice lives alone on family land that was once an apple orchard where she raises bees. After almost running over Jake, a teen in a wheelchair, she offers him a temporary place to live in her home. The heartwarming debut celebrates love, community, and growth. Plus, you'll learn all about beekeeping when it addresses environmental issues around pesticide use.
UPCOMING OPPORTUNITIES
January - Our Money Story
The Stewardship Team is inviting us to continue conversations that began in October 2023 related to our relationship with money. We all have a money story, whether we recognize it or not. Perhaps we are living from a story of fear or shame or guilt. Or a story that our actions won’t have an impact.
Or a story that we don’t have enough. Where might God be speaking a new narrative
into the limited ones we have told ourselves?
LentEN Book Study
The Anti-Racism Committee is inviting us into a study and discussion of "Reparations: A Christian all for Repentance and Repair" by Duke L. Kwon and Gregory Thompson.
PREVIOUS CLASSES & RESOURCES
Focusing on Race & Social Justice
Bible Study: Reading the Bible with Rev. Dr. Esau McCaulley
Led by Jessica Groen
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In this December 2020/January 2021, course we took a closer look at various passages of the Bible along with the interpretive scholarship of Rev. Dr. Esau McCaulley. The two sources we’ll use are a publicly offered webinar course offered through Nashotah House Theological Seminary called "The Bible and Theology in Color” and McCaulley’s recently published book titled Reading While Black. Our session time was used to read and discuss Bible chapters together, discuss specific passages of his book, and view relevant selections from his course videos. Participants interested in accessing the full series of lectures in McCaulley's Nashotah house course can use the link below to receive access to those.
Book Study: Stand your Ground: Black Bodies and the Justice of God by The Rev. Canon Kelly Brown Douglas
Led by Jessica Groen
In October/November 2020, we studied and discussed of a 2015 book by the Rev. Canon Kelly Brown Douglas. The book explores the social and historical frameworks that have developed a stand-your-ground culture in United States. As a theologian and a Black mother responding to the killing of Trayvon Martin, Douglas argues that ideas of American exceptionalism and Manifest Destiny have been harmful to Black Americans, especially because stand-your-ground culture receives a stamp of approval by mainstream religious groups. Douglas highlights how the Black faith tradition provides purpose and hope for seeking God during a time of crisis.
Excerpts from The 1619 Project
Our discussion of August 18, 2019 issue of The New York Times Magazine called The 1619 Project. This Project was created with the goal of re-examining the legacy of slavery in the United States and timed for the 400th anniversary of the arrival of the first Africans in Virginia.
The living artists, writers, and scholars who contributed to this magazine issue and the broader project received the primary focus and place of honor as our course teachers. We spent time to appreciate, in general, their broader life work, but also the courage and care they offered in wrestling with a particular topic or event of US Black history to make their individual contribution to the Project.
The course presentation, including links to further resources is available below, as well as link to The 1619 Project.
Power and Purpose of Protest
We examined the reasons for and history of protests and non-violent resistance, from an article from Anti-Defamation League.
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“Why Bring it Up?” Raising Race Conscious Children
This session was an introduction to a parenting resource: a website called Raising Race Conscious Children. We discussed “Why Bring it Up? Pushing Back Against White Supremacy” in which a parent describes their process of using multiple daily interactions to help children start noticing how majority white culture is presented as the default culture.
"Slurs and Biased Language"
The article “Slurs and Biased Language” provides a list of open-ended questions that caregivers can use as discussion starters with children, and ideas of how anyone could respond when in the presence of slurs or biased language being used to target someone.
A Church of Readers
Whether it’s One-Book-One-Church, Discovery Book Discussions, or CATS (Church at the Train Station), the people of Flossmoor Community Church read a lot of books. If you’re looking for something to read, try one of these recently discussed titles:
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• Being Mortal by Atul Gawande
• Benediction by Kent Haruf
• The Cleaner of Chartres by Salley Vickers
• The Fisherman by Chigozie Obioma
• CITIZEN: An American Lyric by Claudia Rankine
• Go Set a Watchman by Harper Lee
• God, Improv, and the Art of Living by MaryAnn McKibben Dana
• The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas
• Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson
• The Last Week: What the Gospels Really Teach about Jesus’ Final Days in Jerusalem by Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan
• Meeting in the Margins by Cynthia Trenshaw
• Pastrix by Nadia Bolz-Weber
• The Red Notebook by Antoine Laurain
• Searching for Sunday by Rachel Held Evans
• The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead
• Waking Up White: And Finding Myself in the Story of Race by Debby Irving
• The Woman Next Door by Yewande Omotoso
• Pachinko by Min Jin Lee
A master list of all the books discussed with each book’s themes is available below.​
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​Favorite novels over the years have included:
• The Book Thief by Marcus Zusak
• Jayber Crow and Hannah Coulter by Wendell Berry
• The Known World by Edward P. Jones
• Mr. Ives’ Christmas by Oscar Hijuelos
• Samurai’s Garden by Gail Tsukiyama
• Wonder by R. J. Palacio.
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In nonfiction, the group recommends Here If You Need Me by Kate Braestrup and everything by Barbara Brown Taylor.
The Discovery Book Club has met since 1995 and has had extended discussions of books that helped us learn about the Bible, our faith, and our faith in action. We've also met as a book club to discuss novels, memoirs, and nonfiction books that illuminate and help us understand issues that our church is exploring, supporting, and working to comprehend and interpret. We chose these books to give us a view into areas that we might not personally experience. We select titles that immerse us in the lives and experiences of those who represent areas we want to understand better.
Books with Extended Discussions:
Waking Up White: and Finding Myself in the Story of Race by Debby Irving - race relations, self awareness
A Bigger Table: Building Messy, Authentic, and Hopeful Spiritual Community by John Pavlovitz - hospitality, church, authenticity, faith, doubt
Citizen: An American Lyric by Claudia Rankine - microaggressions, racism
So You Want to Talk About Race by Ijeoma Oluo - racism, self- awareness, what can we do to combat racism
Inspired: Slaying Giants, Walking on Water and Loving the Bible Again by Rachel Held Evans - Bible Study, lectio divina, interpretation, healing
One meeting book club discussions:
Becoming Nicole:The Transformation of An American Family by Amy Ellis Nutt - LGBTQ, transgender, empathy
Beartown by Fredrik Bachman - rape culture, accountability, greed, fear
This is How it Begins by Joan Dempsey - LGBTQ, respect, handling conflict, church and state separation
Sweet Bean Paste by Durian Sukegawa - redemption, fear, prejudice, leprosy
Hum if You Don't Know the Words by Bianca Marais - apartheid, hatred, tribalism, motherhood
The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas - Black Lives Matter, racism, gun control, socio-economic issues
An American Marriage by Tayari Jones - racism, incarceration, wrongful conviction, marriage, love, independence
Braiding Sweetgrass for Young Adults: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teaching of Plants by Robin Wall Kimmerer
Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan