Make A Donation
Click Here >
synod school
With a nod to the 29,000 or so RAGBRAI riders who’d arrived in Storm Lake, Iowa, a few hours earlier, the Rev. DeEtte Decker showed up for opening worship at the 69th Annual Synod School on a borrowed bicycle that she pedaled down the center aisle of Buena Vista University’s Schaller Memorial Chapel.
Members and friends of Lakeside Presbyterian Church in Storm Lake, Iowa, supersized the church’s welcome mat Sunday, welcoming scores of visitors attending this week’s Synod School put on annually by the Synod of Lakes and Prairies even as they prepared further hospitality to some of the 29,000 people who were bicycling into town Sunday as part of RAGBRAI, the Register’s Annual Great Bicycle Ride Across Iowa.
For Friday’s final convocation during this week’s Synod of Lakes and Prairies’ Synod School being held at Buena Vista University in Storm Lake, Iowa, the Rev. Dr. Jill Duffield selected the biblical account of the woman pouring an alabaster jar of ointment on the feet of Jesus, which she washed with her tears and dried with her hair.
One good way to live out its embodiment is for the church to speak the truth in love.
“Only as an adult,” the Rev. Dr. Jill Duffield told the Synod of Lakes and Prairies’ Synod School Thursday, displaying a picture of a familiar Presbyterian pastor and children’s television pioneer dressed in a red zip-up sweater, “did I realize how much my theology was shaped by Mister Rogers.”
If you think churches are divided today, reread Ephesians 2:11-22.
During her convocation address Wednesday at the Synod of Lakes and Prairies’ Synod School entitled “Called Out to be a Prophet,” the Rev. Dr. Jill Duffield listed some qualities of biblical prophets:
LOUISVILLE — “Why?”
The favorite and persistent question of children everywhere may exasperate parents, grandparents and caregivers, but it’s an important question, the Rev. Samuel Son told the 450 participants during worship Tuesday at the Synod of Lakes and Prairies’ Synod School.
Blessings can come from unanticipated sources in places we might not expect. For the Rev. Dr. Jill Duffield and her family, the place was outside a Goodwill dressing room, and the sources were two older women unknown to the Duffield family.
Growing up in the City of New York, the Rev. Samuel Son said he remembers pretending that he didn’t care how early in the process he was selected to play in a pickup baseball game. “We would stand there, trying to look like we didn’t care,” Son recalled during evening worship Monday at the Synod of Lakes and Prairies Synod School. “But at the same time, we tried to stand out. We definitely didn’t want to be the last kid [selected].”
