Resources for information and study
First Presbyterian Church's weekly services at 10:30 AM are great resources for study. We also have Sunday School at 10:45 each Sunday.
Websites of interest are listed below.
The Presbytery of Cayuga Syracuse has an informative website, with news of local interest and resources for study.
The Bible Gateway is a tool for reading and researching scripture online in the language or translation of your choice.
The website Center for Excellence in Preaching of the Calvin Theological Seminary in Grand Rapids, Michigan has ideas for sermons on lectionary passages (these make great study points too), and recommended commentaries listed for every book of the Bible.
The Wikipedia entry for Presbyterian is at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presbyterian and for comparison of Bible translations, visit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_English_Bible_translations Try the Search to find other articles of interest. You can change anything on a Wiki, and on Wikipedia you don't even have to log in.
You can study five gospels in parallel at http://www.utoronto.ca/religion/synopsis/ Three years of common lectionary are available at http://divinity.library.vanderbilt.edu/lectionary/
PCUSA offers frequently asked questions on the Common Lectionary (http://www.pcusa.org/devotions/lectionary/faq.htm). Study resources for each week's Common Lectionary are found at http://www.textweek.com/ Sermons for the Common Lectionary are found at http://www.rockies.net/~spirit/sermon.html
Highlights of the 2006 General Assembly remain posted, as does the blog kept by our Youth Delegate, Susan Newman. A search of the PCUSA site produces news items that show how implementation of the "PUP" report is working out.
Study resources at church
Members are invited to visit the church library to read and to borrow books. We have added God Grew Tired of Us: A Memoir by John Dau, a story of survival of ethnic cleansing in Sudan. John Dau fled his native country at 13, and now lives in Syracuse. First Presbyterian Church of Skaneateles sponsored John's application for US citizenship in 2001. A documentary film on the topic of the book was shown in Auburn May 5 and 6, 2007.
Histories of First Presbyterian Church of Auburn, New York are part of the library, as is a binder on the years 1886 to 1911 when William H. Hubbard was pastor. More notebooks on eras in the history of the church will be coming, and there is a history display in the Narthex.
A guide to personal prayer
The Sunday, July 29, 2007 sermon at First Presbyterian Church was especially effective because it included an interactive exercise!
Rev. Janet Newman's title was "Conversations with God." Looking at Abraham's conversation with God in Genesis 18:20-32, and at the Lord's Prayer and its development in the New Testament, especially Luke 11:1-13, Janet examined the Lord's Prayer as a communication to and with God. Taking the Lord's Prayer as a model she asked everyone to find a pencil and make some notes on the back of the announcements:
- What is God to you? How would you describe God?
- How can you best give thanks to and praise God?
- What do you need, and how would you ask God for it?
- What do you need forgiveness for?
- What do you need to be lead away from?
- How best can you thank God and praise Him again, as a conclusion to your prayer?
This exercise is a step-by-step way to develop a prayer for personal purposes, and Janet suggested everyone put away what they had written, and look at it again after a while to see if it's still the right prayer for them. We hope this short exercise helps you.