Plymouth has a growing tradition of deepening our faith by meeting in small groups during Lent. Each group will seek to build community by creating safe space for conversations about what matters most. Alongside this season’s worship theme on the Ten Commandments, small groups will connect our daily lives to the question of “How are we loving God?”
Some groups will meet over a meal. Others will discuss a book, work on a creative project, and discuss what it means to love God in our daily settings. Everyone is invited to find a group, get to know someone new, and engage in conversation that helps us remember how God loves us. Registration begins today, February 1, and continues through the first Sunday of Lent, February 18. Note that because several groups have limited space, there may be a cap on the number of participants in those. Look for any updates or additions to these groups on our website and in next week’s e-news and email.
Options include:
Mondays
Play within a Play: Exploring Life through Other Voices
Monday evenings, February 12-March 25 (skipping February 19), 7:00 PM | at Plymouth
Group Leaders: Maggie Fales and Jacque Jones
Our meetings will be a series of rehearsals of a play, culminating in a final sharing at the last meeting. Participants will work with a script and will be encouraged to step out of their comfort zones and into the shoes of a character in the play. Along with the rehearsal, we plan to explore the structure of the story and the lives and motivations of the characters, and how those can inform our own lives. Anyone who is willing to get on their feet with a script in their hands is welcome to participate. No acting experience is required, and no public performance is planned. We’re looking for a minimum of 5 participants, with no maximum number for the group.
Wednesdays
Sacred Intersections at Tea Time
Wednesday mornings, February 21-March 20, 10:00-11:00 AM | the Plymouth Teen Room
Group Leader: Lesley-Ann Hix Tommey
The story of our faith--especially the story of the Israelite's freedom and wandering in the wilderness--encourages us to experience holy encounters at the intersection of contemplation and liberation. Lent is our yearly reminder that we need both prayer and action in our lives. As we read Mary Alice Birdwhistell and Tyler Mayfield’s Holy & Hard Work: A Lenten Journey through the Book of Exodus, we will explore the sacred geography of our own city and pay attention to the Spirit's voice as we do. We will share tea and learn from our reading and from each other. We will also sit in silent meditation, discover the holy work happening in Brooklyn, and seek our own intersection with God's love.
Wednesday Bible Study and The Ten Commandments: Laws of the Heart
Wednesday mornings, February 14-March 27, 10:30 AM-noon noon (with a hybrid option for those joining online) | the Music Room at Plymouth
Group Leader: Elizabeth Snypes
As we dive deeper into the Commandments during Lent, Joan Chittister’s book, The Ten Commandments: Laws of the Heart will guide our Wednesday Bible study discussion. As we read together, we will look closer at each commandment and consider how we are loving God with all our hearts and loving our neighbors as ourselves. This study begins on Ash Wednesday and focuses on the commandment covered in worship the previous weekend. While most of us will gather in the church choir room, those who cannot attend in person have the option of joining us online.
Losing Moses on the Freeway: Confronting the Ten Commandments in Person
Wednesday evenings, February 21-March 20, 6:45-7:45 PM (with a hybrid option for those joining online) | at Plymouth
Group Leader: John Leighton
10 Participants
In Losing Moses on the Freeway: The 10 Commandments in America, author Chris Hedges writes of the Commandments as “guideposts” that keep the human desire for self-interest in check to allow for love and community. Our personal lives are often mundane, without deserts to cross or seas to part. So, Hedges expands each Commandment with modern examples that are relatable and faith inspiring. If you are new to the Commandments, or unsure about their prescriptions, this brief book reveals their link to our contemporary Christian life and how they enrich the church.
John’s hope for this time together is to highlight real-life examples and situations where faith helps us find comfort and resolve for living. Our conversations will reflect the broad range of spiritual literature that Plymouth people often dabble in and introduce them to more books that may appeal. Participants may also write a short piece related to one of the Commandments after seeing the style of the essays in Losing Moses on the Highway.
Thursdays
Plymouth Men’s Lenten Group
Thursday evenings, February 22-March 21, 7:30 PM | at the home of Chris Owens
Group Leader: Chris Owens and Josh Pater
This group will meet weekly during Lent in the hope of examining their lives and their faith while becoming closer as friends. Their discussions will focus on conversation questions that are connected to our Lenten worship focus, The 10 Words of Life.
Fridays
Friday Night Meltdown
Friday evenings, 6-8:30 PM (discussion starts at 7) | at the Koster home
First meeting is a soft open on February 16, President’s Day weekend; February 23 is off-site (TBA); Regular Fridays will be March 1-22
Group Leader: Caroline and James Koster
Multi-generations, ages 21-99, plus young adults, families with children, new acquaintances, virtual strangers and old pals are welcome to register for this “12-16 guests-plus kids” group. There will be a teenage sitter on hand for childcare. This hodgepodge salon of community, poetry, and art will share some kind of meal and laughs or sorrows or grouchiness depending on the week we all have.
Our theme will be to open up the cabinets--literally and metaphorically--to use what’s there, throw in a little of this and that, and when it’s gone, it’s gone. But when it’s done, it may be delicious. Food might be French ski chalet one week and tacos the next. Some soup, salad, casseroles, and you bring dessert. In our low expectations, we seek to find grace, refreshment, the joy of not having a proper plan. We’ll consider the Commandments in community and maybe make a few of our own. Thou shalt not expect perfection. Thou shalt expect warmth and chaos.
Sundays
Editing a Life that Sings
Sunday mornings, February 18-March 24, 9:00-10:30 AM | at the parsonage
Group Leaders: Carol Younger
When our lives are more fuzzy than focused, too cluttered to find the center, or too flat to generate harmony, we need a good edit. Editing a Life meets on the six Sunday mornings during Lent to search for the editing wisdom we need with journals in one hand and Commandments in the other. Writing exercises and well-worn editing truths will challenge us to make the words that lead to life our own.
Whether you consider yourself a writer or not, you have a story to shape and live out. Join us as we share coffee, conversation, and an encouraging Lenten practice.
Re-thinking the Christian Church’s Words: The Sermons of Paul Tillich
Sunday afternoons, 12:45 – 1:45 PM | Storrs Library at Plymouth
Group Leader: Mark Long
This group is at full capacity.
Paul of Tarsus, in his letter to the Romans, makes plain that the Law and its rituals, yes including the Ten Commandments, is an insufficient foundation for Jew or Gentile to build a life pleasing to God. The Law reveals the state of things (‘sin’) but otherwise is a frustrating blueprint for ethical conduct. It is Paul’s way of telling the Jews in the church to not be so arrogant. Paul tells both Jew and Gentile in the church to follow Jesus instead. But how to do so is the question that the Christian church has grappled with through the centuries.
Paul Tillich, an esteemed preacher and theology teacher in the mid-20th century, observed that the Christian church is in crisis because its answer to that question is no longer intelligible or relevant to many in the churches and fails to draw in the unchurched. We will read sermons from The Shaking of the Foundations and The New Being and discuss whether Tillich’s re-thinking of the Church’s words, ‘God’, ‘sin’, ‘grace,’ and ‘salvation,’ offer hope of restoring the sufficiency of the biblical Paul’s answer about how to follow Jesus to those no longer able to accept the Christian church’s answer in its present forms.
More Details to Come
Liturgical Arts Group
Time and Location TBA
Group Leader: Penelope Kulko
This Liturgical Arts group hopes to begin during this Lenten season and continue over time. While we don’t expect to complete our work in this season, the dream starts now. For questions or more information, please contact Penelope.
A good fit for this group includes:
Plymouth friends who get energy and enjoyment out of working in textile arts.
Individuals with some experience in one or more of the following disciplines is required: use of a sewing machine, quilting, hand stitching, embroidery, fabric painting, or thread art.
Friends who have a heart for designing and creating wall hangings (2’x3’).
People who relish community and conversations that lead to life (connected to this year’s theme of Ten Words of Life).
