ADULT CHRISTIAN EDUCATION OPPORTUNITIES

To sign up for any of these Adult CE programs, please call the church office at 781-235-4424, or email Church Administrator Mary Downes at mary@hillschurch.org, or you can sign up TODAY during Community Hour at the Adult CE table in the Assembly Room.

DISCOVER GOD'S PRESENCE IN CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE AND IMAGES
The Hills Church is pleased to launch a different kind of book club. Our aim will be to use stories and essays from contemporary American literature to investigate how life and faith merge in surprising ways and places. While secular fiction may not be the most predictable place to listen for God, it may well turn out to be among the most rewarding, transcendent, and, ultimately, the most personally felt. Where do you listen for God? The challenge is to pay attention everywhere. Our first gathering will meet in the Reception Room on Wednesday, October 1st, at 7:30 p.m. We will discuss two short stories by Raymond Carver, “A Small Good Thing,” and “Cathedral.” The Book Group will be led by Matt Fitzgerald and others.

KNOWING GOD: A SEVEN-WEEK BIBLE STUDY GROUP
God’s people carried questions about their creator that are mirrored in the Scriptures.  They wondered: What is God’s true nature? Can we trust God to be loving, fair, and just? How can we know the unknowable God? We wonder, too! We will explore these and other questions that shape our faithful inquiry in a seven-week Bible Study that will meet in the Reception Room on Sundays from 5:30 until 6:30 p.m. beginning September 21st.

LECTIONARY BIBLE STUDY GROUP
The Hills Church Lectionary Bible Study Group has been meeting every Sunday morning at 8:45 a.m. in the Church Library for over fourteen years to discuss the Scripture that will be read during that Sunday’s service and, often, the musical and sermonic themes as well. Gaining a prior familiarity with the week’s Bible passages almost always deepens the experience of the Sunday morning worship service. The group uses as its guide the lectionary three-year cycle program widely utilized in North American Protestant churches. Study materials are circulated among the group in advance, and attendees take turns leading the weekly discussion. New attendees are always welcome. Please contact John and Dwin Schuler at johnanddwinschuler@verizon.net.

THEOLOGY READING GROUP
Theology has been famously defined as “faith seeking understanding.” The Hills Church Theology Reading Group will meet once a month to discuss an important work of contemporary or historical theology. Our aim is to dive into some of Christianity’s most exciting, perplexing and illuminating ideas while learning from great authors and from one another. If you enjoy philosophical discussions, long to know more about the intellectual bedrock of Christianity, and hope for a more engaged and thoughtful faith, the Theology Reading Group is for you. The class itself and the books we read can be likened to the bibliography of an undergraduate seminar in religious thought. The ideas that we will wrestle with have the potential to transform the way you experience Christianity. The Theology Reading Group will be led by Matt Fitzgerald. At our first gathering on Sunday, September 28th, at 6:30 p.m. in the Reception Room, a schedule for regular meetings will be set.

NEW ONLINE BIBLE STUDY OFFERED
Would you like to arrive to worship on Sunday morning already familiar with the day’s main scripture reading, a sense of its history and theology? Would you like to experience each week’s sermon on a deeper level, having given your own thought to the questions at hand? Do you want to learn more about the Bible at your own pace, in your own space, in a low-key way? If so, you will like this new opportunity.

I am excited to begin a new weekly online Bible Study. Each Tuesday morning, I will send an e-mail with the biblical text upon which the next Sunday’s sermon will be based. If you sign up to join our online study group, you’ll receive the reading in an interesting translation, some brief historical background, a sense of where my thoughts are headed, and a few questions to ponder. My hope is that this on-line forum will create a sermon dialogue that begins before the first note of the prelude is sounded! And I hope that by familiarizing ourselves with the day’s lesson in advance, our worship experience might grow even more reflective, more intense, more engaged.

Keep your eyes on your email inbox. An invitation to join our online Bible Study will arrive soon. If the church office does not have your e-mail address, please drop us a note! You can add your name to the Hills Church email list by getting in touch with our Church Administrator, Mary Downes, at mary@hillschurch.org.

—Matt