The Prime Timers Adult Bible Fellowship Welcomes You to Our Weekly Web Page!

We meet just about every Sunday in the Payne Education Center from 10:10am to 10:50, rooms 207-209.  Please join us for coffee, breakfast snacks and currently Paul's first letter to the Corinthians.

Skip Allen is one of our summer rotating series of teachers. He led the Prime Timers today.

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 intend to donate to a good cause.

Gayle Ferguson told us a good news in spite of bad news story. Her husband Arlen's been diagnosed with prostate cancer, but has found himself in contact with some of the best physicians in the field through his church activities! Talk about the hand of God. And his preliminary tests show no growth outside of the prostate.

Max Kech is back from the Amistad Mission in Bolivia. She described some of the good work being done there for the hundred or so abandoned and orphaned children living there.

Caroline Maryan gave thanks for this web page! I don't even know what to say, except thanks!

Returning member and former Prime Timers leader Jackie Rose just finished her first year at seminary! Congratulations Jackie. Jackie works full time and where she found time for a full semester's work is anyone's guess. Welcome back!

Finding Wisdom

Skip Allen taught class today, guiding us through more of Paul's first letter to the Corinthians. To begin, he gave us some context of the period when this letter was written, starting with Paul's lack of contact with the historical Jesus. After all, Paul was persecuting Christians before his experience on the Road to Damascus. Paul begins today's reading by saying he comes to us without eloquence or superior wisdom, although you might take this as a technique of a Great Orator!

The city of Corinth was destroyed by the Romans in 146 BC, and was rebuilt around 44BC, so in a way Paul was addressing a new city. There was lots of activity, thanks to its position as a trade crossroads, and a great diversity of people, poor and rich. Wealth without culture could describe its character.

At the heart of today's reading is a theme of Paul's that recurs often in his letters:  the idea that you must be mature to accept God's wisdom. That there are two types of people, the wise and perfect as opposed to the foolish and babes. The Corinthians are to Paul infants in Christ.

Only people who are spirituals can receive the gifts of the Spirit, immature people cannot discern spiritual truth. Spiritual people have the mind of Christ.

The discussion began with George Laigle reiterating one of his themes, that you have to want to find wisdom, it won't find you. Skip Allen answered that you need to open yourself up to the Spirit, through revelation or meditation.

Max Kech then read our healing prayer and Skip Allen read a benediction before dismissing class.

Prime Timers Contact names and numbers

Mentor

Rev. B. Massey Gentry
mgentry@stmartinsepiscopal.org

Leader

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. Paul by Masaccio (1401-1428?), tempera on cloth, currently at the Museo Nazionale in Pisa, Italy.

St. Paul, mosaic from the Arian Baptistry, Ravenna, Italy. Created around 526 AD.

St. Paul by Sir Edward Burne-Jones, stained glass at St. Paul's church, Irton, England, around 1865.

The Lesson for Sunday, June 18th is titled "Building Together"

Key Verse:  1 Corinthians 3:9

Focus of the Lesson:  Many people recognize that spiritual growth depends on the foundation laid by teachers and mentors. How does spiritual formation take place within the community of faith? Paul describes a process by which he first introduced people to the gospel, laying a foundation in Jesus Christ, and then others nurtured the new Christians toward maturity.

The reading is 1 Corinthians 3:1-15. This text is from the New International Version^®.

   1 Brothers, I could not address you as spiritual but as worldly—mere infants in Christ. 2 I gave you milk, not solid food, for you were not yet ready for it. Indeed, you are still not ready. 3 You are still worldly. For since there is jealousy and quarreling among you, are you not worldly? Are you not acting like mere men? 4 For when one says, "I follow Paul," and another, "I follow Apollos," are you not mere men?

   5 What, after all, is Apollos? And what is Paul? Only servants, through whom you came to believe—as the Lord has assigned to each his task. 6 I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God made it grow. 7 So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God, who makes things grow. 8 The man who plants and the man who waters have one purpose, and each will be rewarded according to his own labor. 9 For we are God's fellow workers; you are God's field, God's building.

   10 By the grace God has given me, I laid a foundation as an expert builder, and someone else is building on it. But each one should be careful how he builds. 11 For no one can lay any foundation other than the one already laid, which is Jesus Christ. 12 If any man builds on this foundation using gold, silver, costly stones, wood, hay or straw, 13 his work will be shown for what it is, because the Day will bring it to light. It will be revealed with fire, and the fire will test the quality of each man's work. 14 If what he has built survives, he will receive his reward. 15 If it is burned up, he will suffer loss; he himself will be saved, but only as one escaping through the flames.

NIV®