Welcome to the Prime Timers A.B.F!

Class is held each Sunday from 10:10 am until 10:50 on the second floor of the Payne Education Center. This quarter's theme is Called to be God's People and we invite you to come join us.

Henny Penny, the Prime Timers chicken, is blessed this week with news from Dorothy Green about successful cataract surgery for her husband Burge! She says he is so happy he just might come out of retirement! Just kidding we hope. In the same line the Rev. Bob Brown told us that all the family members who came for their Thanksgiving festivities have now left!

Don't be afraid, its just Caroline Maryan lining up food donations for the Prime Timers Christmas Party!

The Prime Timers are the Party Timers!

Its less than two weeks until the Prime Timers next party, hosted by Skip and Caroline Maryan on Dec. 10! Refreshments will be handled like the Halloween party, in other words your contributions are being requested. Invitations went out this past week, and you can sign up for duty at class or by calling Caroline Maryan at the number below (Skip Maryan's)!

Prime Timers Contact names and numbers

Co-Leaders

The Prime Timers classroom can get crowded, but there's always room for one more.

Janie Putman welcomes first time visitors Val Wainwright and Charlotte Douglas.

Community

The lesson from this week dealt with Paul's letters to the Ephesians. Jackie provided the context that it is likely that the "author" of these letters was not Paul, but a disciple of Paul who wrote from a collection of Paul’s letters and his own experience of Paul’s message. This was a common method of transmitting ideas in an age before printing and helps explain differences in style between Paul's letters. Jackie also said this letter was likely meant to be circulated among churches throughout Asia Minor.

The passage starts out using the word circumcision leading to a discussion of peoples separated at very basic levels, from purely physical to the web of laws at the time defining a very strict path to God. Paul uses architectural metaphors, showing Christ breaking down the "walls" or barriers between people, building a "foundation" on the apostles and prophets, and having a "cornerstone" in Christ Jesus.

Jackie then challenged us to discover the difference between inviting and welcoming. Invite friends to the Christmas party, for example. Then she distributed "Five Friends" cards, asking us to write down five friends who do not have a relation with the living God, and to pray for them.

The Lesson for this Sunday, December 5 is titled "The Call to Follow God"

Key Verse:  Genesis 12:1

Focus of the Lesson:  People decide who or what to follow, and this involves trust. How do we respond when we feel God's call? By the way they followed God into an unknown future, Abram and Sarai model trust we are to have in God.

The reading is Genesis 11:27-12:9. This text is from the New International Version.

27 This is the account of Terah.

Terah became the father of Abram, Nahor and Haran. And Haran became the father of Lot. 28 While his father Terah was still alive, Haran died in Ur of the Chaldeans, in the land of his birth. 29 Abram and Nahor both married. The name of Abram's wife was Sarai, and the name of Nahor's wife was Milcah; she was the daughter of Haran, the father of both Milcah and Iscah. 30 Now Sarai was barren; she had no children.
31 Terah took his son Abram, his grandson Lot son of Haran, and his daughter-in-law Sarai, the wife of his son Abram, and together they set out from Ur of the Chaldeans to go to Canaan. But when they came to Haran, they settled there.
32 Terah lived 205 years, and he died in Haran.

Genesis 12

1 The LORD had said to Abram, "Leave your country, your people and your father's household and go to the land I will show you.
2 "I will make you into a great nation and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. 3 I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you."
4 So Abram left, as the LORD had told him; and Lot went with him. Abram was seventy-five years old when he set out from Haran. 5 He took his wife Sarai, his nephew Lot, all the possessions they had accumulated and the people they had acquired in Haran, and they set out for the land of Canaan, and they arrived there.
6 Abram traveled through the land as far as the site of the great tree of Moreh at Shechem. At that time the Canaanites were in the land. 7 The LORD appeared to Abram and said, "To your offspring I will give this land." So he built an altar there to the LORD , who had appeared to him.
8 From there he went on toward the hills east of Bethel and pitched his tent, with Bethel on the west and Ai on the east. There he built an altar to the LORD and called on the name of the LORD . 9 Then Abram set out and continued toward the Negev.