After telling the 450 or so people attending the Synod of Lakes and Prairies’ Synod School on Monday that they’re co-creators with God and, as John Calvin once said, “little manifestations of God’s glory,” the Rev. Dr. Jill Duffield proved her point by asking participants to use their cellphones to take first a selfie and then a photo of the people seated around them.
Following the Rev. Dr. J. Herbert Nelson, II’s address to Synod School Thursday evening, he and Ruling Elder Elona Street-Stewart, co-moderator of the 224th General Assembly (2020), held an engaging chat in front of more than 80 of the 330 or so people who attended this year’s Synod School via Zoom and Facebook.
Synod School students taking part in the Rev. Sarah Trone Garriott’s class, A Theology of Interfaith Engagement, heard firsthand experiences Wednesday from six youth and young adults who participated earlier this month or in previous years in an interfaith youth leadership camp in Des Moines, Iowa.
The COVID-19 era “is going to radically push what the church is in the future,” the Rev. Dr. Jason Brian Santos told the Synod of Lakes and Prairies’ Synod School Wednesday evening.
Opportunities abound for interfaith engagement, a pastor with the Des Moines Area Religious Council told a virtual classroom full of the Synod of Lakes and Prairies’ Synod School students on Tuesday. All one must do is “step outside of what is normal for you and move into someone else’s reality.”
Having as much fun as they could via Zoom, more than 330 Presbyterians gathered from across the country and across borders for the opening night of Synod School Monday. They were treated to a childhood faith story from the Rev. Dr. Rodger Nishioka and laughed with — not at — a Synod School mainstay, the Rev. Burns Stanfield and his online band of tie dye-clad musicians.
Synod School, a Synod of Lakes and Prairies event anticipated by hundreds of Presbyterians each summer, launched Monday with thought-provoking online classes ahead of Monday evening’s virtual plenary gathering.
The Rev. Tom Willadsen of Oshkosh, Wisconsin, has become a fixture at the Synod of Lakes and Prairies’ Synod School, where his classes are known for humor.
Willadsen, author of “OMG! LOL! Faith and Laughter,” which can be found here, spent 19 years as pastor of First Presbyerian Church in Oshkosh. There he organized monthly meetings of faith leaders in the community and served as organizer and master of ceremonies at an annual Interfaith Festival of Gratitude.
For David Barnhart, it’s the story — not his story, but the story of the subject.
“One of the things I love about the work that we do is that we don’t know where it’s going. We have no idea where it’s going and what the focus is,” he said. “What we try to do is work with the community and have them guide us and [the film] needs to go wherever it needs to get.”
