Introduction

Glendale Baptist places high value on Christian education in the church. Our educational offerings reflect the diversity in the membership.

Sunday School meets each Sunday from 9:30 to 10:20 a.m.

Sunday morning classes, provided for all age groups, use a variety of approaches and curriculum materials including regular Sunday School materials from Cokesbury, curriculum for Workshop Rotation Model (WoRM) for elementary school age children, as well as stand-alone books and member-designed eclectic approaches for adult classes.

Goals of Children's Education

Glendale provides Christian education for our children that:

• ensures their familiarity with the Bible and its importance in the life of the church and the individual Christian;
• encourages them toward baptism and a committed life of Christian discipleship;
• allows them to grow in Christ in a supportive community which recognizes the stages of faith development;
• leads to freedom to question and seek answers in the context of their growing commitment to Christ;
• leads to protection from coercion or manipulation in matters related to faith and ministry;
• makes them sensitive to the numerous ministry needs and opportunities around them;
• introduces them, by adult example and common experience, to the important role of worship, Christian education, and service in the life of the church.

Sunday School

Babies, Toddlers & Preschoolers

Babies: Rhonda Pearson is our nursery teacher. The curriculum for the babies is to be cuddled and engaged by teachers, who also serve as loving caregivers. Our infant nursery is located upstairs.

Toddlers: Devin Wells and Connie Brookshire are our Toddlers teachers. The Toddlers class meets in the first classroom on the left on the main level.

Preschoolers: Klem-Mari Cajigas is our Preschool teacher. The 3 and 4 year year olds use Exploring the Faith curriculum, also published by Cokesbury. The Preschoolers meet on the main floor in the second room on the left.

Kindergarten through Sixth Grade

This year, Glendale has begun our first year of Workshop Rotation Model, or WoRM for short. Here’s a brief description of this model of doing Sunday School. Teach major Bible stories and concepts through kid-friendly multimedia workshops: an Art workshop, Drama, Music, Games, Puppets, Storytelling, Computers, and any other educational media you can get your hands on. Teach the same Bible story in all of the workshops for four or five weeks rotating the kids to a different workshop each week. The same teacher is in each workshop for all four or five weeks -teaching the same lesson week after week (with some age appropriate adjustments) to each new class coming in.

Here's why it works: The WoRM concentrates on the major stories of the Bible over and over again. The model's philosophy recognizes that kids not only love repetition, but they need it to develop a lasting memory and understanding of content. The multi-intelligences (creative methods) approach in the model isn't a fad or merely kid-friendly, it is calculated to take advantage of our student's God-given thirst for multi-modal learning. (excerpt from www.rotation.org)

Each age group has a shepherd. This person stays with the class as they move through all the different workshops. The shepherd is the consistent face the kids can count on from week-to-week.

Our Shepherds are:
Kindergarten: David Webb
1st & 2nd Grade: MATrotter
3rd & 4th Grade: Beverly Feinstein
5th & 6th Grade: Sharon Hiett

One wonderful part of WoRM is that many of the adults in our church who typically would not be involved in children’s Sunday School can rotate through and teach a workshop for a month or two. This fall two adult Sunday School classes have ‘adopted’ a month to teach the rotations.

Youth

Our Youth Sunday School class is coordinated by a dedicated team of great men and women. Rand Carpenter, Kylene Dibble, Lyndsey Godwin, and Doug Trotter take turns teaching month-to-month. They use the Cokesbury curriculum, "Lync," published weekly by email, facilitating the inclusion of current events in the lessons.

Adult Sunday School
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Reflections Class
The Reflections class reads a variety of texts – articles, books, poems, curricula – and discusses them together. These texts usually address, in some way, how faith can interface with aspects of modern society, so it focuses on socially conscious living.

Young Adult Class
This class studies a variety of topics as determined by the attendees. Some past topics include: survey of world religions and their calls to social justice, Biblical studies with guest speakers.

Men’s Class
The men in this class study books of Biblical themes, and books particularly related to men and men’s issues.

BibleStudy@Glendale.etc.
This class focuses on primarily Biblical and extra-Biblical sources for study.

Special Studies Class
This class chooses a topic and studies it for several weeks. Some recent examples include learning about end-of-life decisions and Hospice care, reading a controversial Christian author, and studies led by authors within our own Glendale community.

Wednesday Evening Activities

Children
School Year: Families eat together from 5:45 to 6:10. Elementary children can participate in our Children’s Choir program from 6:10 to 6:50, where they learn about music and singing. This choir sings periodically during Sunday worship services, as well as on other special occasions. From 6:50 to 7:30 various members of the congregation lead the children in studying about Missions, Baptist Heritage, Faith Development, and Stewardship of the Earth.
Summer: During the summer a variety of activities are planned for the children – some with the youth and adults, and some by themselves. Some of the activities include a church-wide scavenger hunt, picnics at the lake, and a water activities night featuring a huge water slide down the hill in front of the church.

Youth
Youth can be found doing a variety of things on Wednesday evenings. They are currently building peace poles for some partner organizations following the success last year of our own peace pole. The peace pole was a project that they developed for their involvement in PeaceJam – an international event held in Denver in 2006. Other recentt events attended by youth in 2007 include Baptist Youth Camp in North Carolina and the Baptist Peace Fellowship of North America's summer conference ("Peace Camp") in Berea, Kentucky. For more information about Glendale's youth and youth activities, click here.

Adults
Wednesday evening programs after dinner are frequently educational in nature, with occasional educational presentations from community social service leaders. The first Wednesday of each month is used for committee and Division meetings, with an option of gathering with friends and sharing. A Vespers service is held once a month. The Church Council uses other Wednesday evenings for special discussions and consideration of topics of interest to the congregation.