Christian Education

The heart of St. Barnabas' Parish is its Christian Education program. Central to that is the Sunday School which meets every Sunday morning at 9:30 during the program year - September through May. There are classes for all ages from pre-school to adults. In addition there are other opportunities on Sunday and during the week for learning more about God, about our Savior and about our Christian life.

Elementary Sunday School

The younger children in the parish learn the Bible stories of both the Old and New Testament, with an emphasis on discovering how God has inspired people like us to do His work in the world. The curriculum employs visual, verbal and tactile cues which inscribe the stories on the hearts of the listeners - as well as the teachers.

The schedule for the year loosely follows the liturgical year with a group of related Bible stories in the Fall, followed by the Advent Stories. After Christmas, there is a second group of related stories in the winter, followed by the Lenten and Easter Stories. The lessons or concepts expressed in the stories are then reinforced by an activity, typically a craft or game.

We also offer a yearly Vacation Bible School experience for our younger children. Beginning with the 2005 Vacation Bible School, we tested a new format of an intensive but fun one-day Saturday session instead of the five consecutive evenings we had used for several years. This format gave us a better opportunity to utilize the VBS curriculum and allowed all of the children to fully participate in all planned activities.

Junior-Senior High Sunday School

The focus for the older children changes to exploring the way the Christian values they have learned intersect with the world in which they live. Using the greater verbal skills they are building, they discuss topics as diverse as the controversy regarding women and gays in the ministry, making decisions of personal ethics based on a Christian understanding of the world, and even finding God in the Harry Potter books. Our Junior-Senior High schoolers were also the main players in our Christmas Pageant.

The Rector also leads a yearly Confirmation class, discussing the history of the Church and the responsibilities of membership in the parish for youth aged fourteen through eighteen.

Adult Christian Education

A number of the adults of the parish meet on Sundays, from 10:00 am until they have to leave for the 10:45 am worship service, to discuss either a book of the Bible, or a book chosen by the class members. Individual perspective is combined with traditional teaching and scholarship to make for a lively and enlightening study experience. Recent discussion topics have included Genesis and Exodus, the Epistle to the Galations and the First Epistle of John, as well as Gospel Medicine (a collection of sermons) by Barbara Brown Taylor; and Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse.

Children's Chapel

During the sermon on Sunday mornings, the youngest members of our parish join two adult volunteers for a worship experience in the undercroft that is aimed at their age group. The candles are lit and extinguished by enthusiastic diminutive acolytes, stories are read and sometimes acted out, a creed and prayers are said and an offering is collected. We see it as building the foundation for later Christian education and worship. The wild and distractable "worshippers" seem to see it mainly as fun.

Children's Choir

The St. Barnabas’ Children’s Choir, open to all children in first grade and above, is the musical arm of Christian education. Each Sunday, the children leave the 10:45 am worship service, just before the sermon, to rehearse in the Parish Hall. In addition to singing as a group, there are opportunities for interested children to sing solos with the choir and to play instruments to accompany the singers. Approximately once a month the Children's Choir provides a musical offering for Sunday worship.

Confirmation Training

Confirmation training is provided to all children wishing to be received into full adult membership in The Episcopal Church. This has typically been provided by the Rector, but during the Interim period, the classes were led by Clark Burton, a lay member of the parish who completed his seminary education before deciding to pursue a calling outside of the church.

Clark reports: "We had some lively discussion in our Confirmation class at St. Barnabas due to our curriculum. The traditional part of the curriculum is the Catechism from the Book of Common Prayer. This 17 page document contains the fundamentals of the Christian faith that have been taught in the Anglican Communion for almost 500 years. The untraditional part of the curriculum is the New York Times bestseller The Shack. This book is a powerful portrayal of the healing love of the Triune God. It also contains some profound lessons on the problem of pain, the burden of judgment and the power of forgiveness."