Stone Soup for 3/10/13
Meet at 4 p.m. at the Wesley Cottage at Saluda UMC
132 Greenville St, Saluda, NC 28773

This Sunday we'll talk about the whole youth spiritual journey program we are putting together for April-May. We'll call this our Affirmation Class. From this class, some may decide to join the United Methodist Church, and others who come from other faith backgrounds will be able to affirm their specific faith journey. We live in a small community and we are opening our Affirmation Class to any 7th grader and up. You don't have to be United Methodist, you don't even have to be part of a church to participate with us. We will learn together about the basics of Christian faith that could be applicable across faith backgrounds. We will also learn things that are uniquely United Methodist. Our hope is to help any youth in our area to strengthen or begin their faith journey as a community; crossing denominational and faith backgrounds.
If you know of a middle schooler or high schooler who might be interested please have them or their parents call Rob. If you have any questions about all of this, please call Rob 828-606-3452.

For Stone Soup this week, bring a picnic. The weather should be beautiful and we'll walk to the community garden to think about the continued renewal of the earth at spring time, the renewal in our own lives and what we want to plant in our lives to grow deeper in our spiritual journeys.

Our study this week will be on the moral influence theory of atonement:
from "24 Hours That Changed the World"
"The subjective or moral influence theory of the Atonement maintains that the Atonement was not about changing God or making it possible for God to forgive us. It was, rather, about changing you and me. Jesus' suffering, death and resurrection constitute a divine drama meant to communicate God's Word to humanity, to make clear to us our need for redemption and forgiveness, to show us the full extent of God's love and lead us to repentance..."
see John 3:14-16; John 15:12-13