Welcome to the Prime Timers Web Page!

Class is held just about every Sunday in the Payne Education Center from 10:10am to 10:50 in rooms 207-209.  You are invited to join us for coffee, breakfast snacks and currently Paul's first letter to the Corinthians.

Help with Snack Patrol Needed!

For the last year or so Elizabeth Sleeper recruited Prime Timers to bring in the snacks we enjoy at the beginning of our class. Elizabeth would like another Prime Timer to take over for her at the end of May. The job consists of circulating the calendar to sign people up for "snack duty." Then you follow up to make sure the snacks actually show up on the appointed week! You can contact Elizabeth at her email, listed below in our roster, or you can call Max Kech or Caroline Maryan, (her phone is the same as Skip's.)

Prime Timers Good News

Each week we set aside time for members to tell the class about their good news, for a $1 donation to our chicken, Henny Penny. Henny currently has a nice nest egg that we are going to donate to a good cause.

This week Pringle Ramsey celebrated his first Grandchild from Rob and Kira. Congratulations Pringle, who looked forward to this day for some time! Shirley Allen's daughter finished her finals and got the cast on her arm removed!

Living in Unity

Today we got a new Prime Timer and a new teacher, both in the form of Joe Thomson who gave an informative and passionate talk on Paul's first letter to the Corinthians.

As background for our reading today, Joe read Acts 18:1-17 where Aquila and his wife Priscilla are introduced. They were expelled from Rome by Claudius and Paul works with them in their "house-church," which seems to be the origin of the Corinthian community.

Joe then described a chronology for Paul's journey, starting with 18 months in Corinth, after which he moves to Ephesus, where it is believed he wrote the letter to the Corinthians that we are reading today. Paul makes reference to two previous letters he wrote to the Corinthians, although both of these are lost. So 1 Corinthians is something of an answer to questions from his parishioners.

Our reading for today has Paul trying to clear up quarrels that developed among followers of the new religion of Christianity. A cult of personality was developing around the preachers, when the real path was to follow Christ's teachings.

People said they "followed Paul" where Paul saw them as missing the point. Others followed Apollos, who appealed to the Greeks by taking an intellectual approach, that Christianity might be a philosophy rather than a religion. Cephas (Simon Peter) appealed to the Jews as he said that Christians must still follow the Jewish laws. And still others followed Christ, but believed he was only for them, exclusively.

Paul wanted people to unite in the message of Christ and for people to be perfectly united in mind and thought, 1 Corinthians 1:17 "lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power."

This prompted our Mentor, the Rev. Massey Gentry, to point out that we are not baptized into being Baptist or Episcopalian or Catholic, we are baptized into Christianity.

Joe Thomson then had us read from our Hymnal #427 and #428 and then dismissed the class.

Prime Timers Contact names and numbers

Mentor

Rev. B. Massey Gentry
mgentry@stmartinsepiscopal.org

Leader

Corinth was the New Orleans of its day, a port and the Isthmus where much commerce would flow.

This is St. Paul preaching to the Corinthians.

In the middle in back is our leader, Skip Maryan. He gave a talk to these Korean children at their church, with the help of an interpreter!

St. Martin's Episcopal Church is open for tours 12:30pm every Sunday, and Wednesdays and Fridays, 10:45 AM-12:30 PM; formal tour from 11:00 AM-12:00 PM.

The Lesson for Sunday, June 11th is titled "Finding Wisdom"

Key Verse:  1 Corinthians 2:13

Focus of the Lesson:  People are searching for true wisdom. Where can we find an ageless wisdom that transcends time and culture? Paul writes that God is the source of such wisdom, which Christians receive through the power of the Holy Spirit.

The reading is 1 Corinthians 2:1, 6-16. This text is from the New International Version^®.

   1 When I came to you, brothers, I did not come with eloquence or superior wisdom as I proclaimed to you the testimony about God.

   6 We do, however, speak a message of wisdom among the mature, but not the wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are coming to nothing. 7 No, we speak of God's secret wisdom, a wisdom that has been hidden and that God destined for our glory before time began. 8 None of the rulers of this age understood it, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. 9 However, as it is written:
   "No eye has seen,
      no ear has heard,
    no mind has conceived
      what God has prepared for those who love him"—  10 but God has revealed it to us by his Spirit.
The Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God. 11 For who among men knows the thoughts of a man except the man's spirit within him? In the same way no one knows the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God. 12 We have not received the spirit of the world but the Spirit who is from God, that we may understand what God has freely given us. 13 This is what we speak, not in words taught us by human wisdom but in words taught by the Spirit, expressing spiritual truths in spiritual words. 14 The man without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned. 15 The spiritual man makes judgments about all things, but he himself is not subject to any man's judgment:
16 "For who has known the mind of the Lord
    that he may instruct him?"
But we have the mind of Christ.

NIV®