Welcome to the St. Martin's Prime Timers Web Page!

Join us in the Payne Education Center at St. Martin's, in rooms 207-209.  We meet in between the 9am and 11am services from 10:10am to 10:50. We have coffee and snacks and this week more from Paul's second letter to the Corinthians awaiting you.

This week Prime Timer Skip Allen led the class.

Max Kech brought good news about a co-worker.

Prime Timers Good News

Another class calls this "the fellowship of the chicken" but we call her Henny Penny. This is time at the start of class set aside for bringing good news to the group. You just have to feed her a dollar!

Max Kech brought the not so good news that a co-worker of hers contracted Legionnaires Disease, but now he is now recovering nicely.

Reasons for Giving

Skip Allen taught class today, commenting on how it was "beyond ironic" that for someone who managed to tune out stewardship sermons all his life, here he was teaching two lessons from Paul dealing with giving. Talk about your holy mysteries!

Last week we had Paul using the Macedonians as an example to the Corinthians of generous giving. This week we learn that Paul was doing the same thing with the Macedonians, boasting of the generous nature of the Corinthians! Paul is also proving his worth to the apostles in Jerusalem, the "men of repute." He wants to justify the faith they put in him, entrusting him to create a church among the Gentiles, as well as to provide funds for the church in Jerusalem.

Anyway, Paul has a problem:  he wants to create generous givers in deed as well as word. He uses the metaphor of the sower in 2 Corinthians 9:6 "Remember this: Whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and whoever sows generously will also reap generously."

Skip drew two examples of giving on the board, the first he called the "Two Party Model," with a Patron or giver, and a receiver. The gifts come from the patron, who expects respect, gratitude and honor in return. Think of Chicago politics and you can add in power coming back to the alderman, or patron. This is certainly not what Paul has in mind. His can be called the "Three Party Model," with God on top, "from whom all blessings flow." From Him flow the Time, Talent and Treasure to which we are the stewards. Thus endowed, the steward generously gives to the recipient. At various times can we find ourselves in both roles, the steward and the recipient.

Under Paul's model the question is not whether we give, but how we do it. Skip made reference to our secular culture and how it pushes us to the Two Party, greedy model. This couldn't be a better introduction to Rev. Gipson's sermon for August 20 (watch for it here) about losing your moral compass.

Max Kech then led the class in our healing prayer and Skip Allen dismissed class after a short benediction.

Prime Timers Contact names and numbers

Mentor

Rev. B. Massey Gentry
mgentry@stmartinsepiscopal.org

Leader

The Apostles Peter and Paul, 1520-24, by Correggio, detail of a cupola fresco at the Church of San Giovanni Evangelista, Parma, Italy.

Saints Peter and Paul, 1605-08, by El Greco. Oil on canvas at the Nationalmuseum, Stockholm, Sweeden.

St. Paul on the St. Martin's New Church stained glass. Tours of the church are available every Sunday starting at 12:30pm, and then Wednesdays and Fridays from 10:45am to 12:30pm, with a formal tour from 11:00am to 12:00pm. For more information, or to schedule a tour, call 713-830-4117.

The Lesson for Sunday, August 27th is titled "Leaning on Grace"

Key Verse:  2 Corinthians 12:9a

Focus of the Lesson:  Many people struggle with difficulties in life. What can help us through the difficulties we encounter? In referring to a deeply spiritual experience that he had, Paul recalls God's promise that God's strength would help him through the difficult times.

The reading is 2 Corinthians 12:1-10. This text is from the New International Version^®.

   ¹I must go on boasting. Although there is nothing to be gained, I will go on to visions and revelations from the Lord. ²I know a man in Christ who fourteen years ago was caught up to the third heaven. Whether it was in the body or out of the body I do not know—God knows. ³And I know that this man—whether in the body or apart from the body I do not know, but God knows— ⁴was caught up to paradise. He heard inexpressible things, things that man is not permitted to tell. ⁵I will boast about a man like that, but I will not boast about myself, except about my weaknesses. ⁶Even if I should choose to boast, I would not be a fool, because I would be speaking the truth. But I refrain, so no one will think more of me than is warranted by what I do or say.

   ⁷To keep me from becoming conceited because of these surpassingly great revelations, there was given me a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me. ⁸Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. ⁹But he said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may rest on me. ¹⁰That is why, for Christ's sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.

NIV®