November 7 - December 15, 2004
(Please consult individual course descriptions for times and starting dates.)

Theme Courses marked with this symbol are directly related to the theme for the 2004 - 2005 year "Turning an Upside Down World Rightside Up," which focuses on the Gospel of Luke.

Bible

B104 • One Great Story - Part I
Margaret L. Shafer
Wednesdays, 10:00 am - 11:30 am
Rutgers Presbyterian Church
236 West 73rd Street
November 10 to December 15, 2004

The great biblical story unfolds like a drama which can be understood in acts and scenes replete with fascinating characters. Using a timeline and an array of pictures, participants can be introduced to or reminded of the whole salvation history in which we see God in relation to his covenant people. All the little stories of the Bible begin to make sense in the context of the one great story. Part I focuses on the Old Testament.

Book: Your own copy of the Bible
Recommended Book: Betty Harold, A Bird’s Eye View of the Bible, Bridge, 1997. $15

B206 • Colossians
Charles P. Dougherty
Sundays, 9:30 am - 10:45 am
November 7 to December 12, 2004

The letter of Paul to the Christians in Colossae plumbs the deepest truths of the Christian faith. Paul writes of the Lordship of Jesus, who is the Christ, Creator, Sustainer, and Savior. In exploring the relationship of Jesus to creation, the church, the world and most particularly to you and me, we see the sublime and the practical. The study is oatmeal on a cold day, steel for the spine, music to dance to, and truths on which to build a life.

Book: The Letters to the Philippians, Colossians, and Thessalonians, ed. William Barclay, Westminster Press. $9

Theology

T106 • What We Believe
(Intensive Course)
Randolph L.C. Weber
Sunday, 9:00 am - 3:00 pm
November 7, 2004

Designed for persons interested in exploring the nature of Christian faith and/or membership in the Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church, the class will include a review of core Christian doctrine, key tenets of Reformed faith, an overview of worship and the sacraments, an in-depth look at Fifth Avenue’s mission and ministry, an examination of the meaning of faith and membership, and the history of the Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church. The course also offers the opportunity to meet all four pastors who will each be teaching one of the class sections. Lunch and worship will be included. Those desiring to unite with the church will meet with session members and be recognized by the congregation at the following Sunday worship service.

Practical Theology

PTCL111 • Study, Discussion, and Community for Young Married Couples
Greg and Kirsten Aiello
Mike and Eleanor Peters
Sundays, 9:30 am - 10:45 am
November 7 to December 12, 2004

Same as Term 1. See above.

PTCL214 • Forgiveness: The Forgotten Feat
Daryl A. Hall
Saturday, 9:00 am - 4:30 pm
November 6

This course deals with forgiveness in our day-to-day activities, both at work and in personal relationships. Its aim is to provide a forum to explore the attitudes and beliefs involved in forgiveness, and to provide practical steps everyone can take to forgive others and themselves. This course will use case studies, discussions, interactive exercises, and skill practice including skills learned in PTCL213. Outcomes from the course include

• Definition of forgiveness: what it is and isn’t
• Four steps to forgiving others
• Seven steps to forgiving yourself

Please bring a brown bag lunch. Coffee and tea will be provided.

Class size: 20

Books: Thom Rutledge, The Self-Forgiveness Handbook, New Harbinger Publications, $12. Les Carter, Ph.D. and Frank Minirth, M.D., The Choosing to Forgive Workbook, Thomas Nelson Publication, 1997. $16.

PTCL248 • Loving and Getting Along with Your Partner’s Differences
James Walkup
Saturday, 10:00 am - 3:30 pm
November 13, 2004

Did you ever wonder why your partner only relaxes when you have a plan? Have you felt sometimes your best beloved was all head and no feelings? Did you wonder why your partner needed to retreat after being with people? Do you ever get frustrated that your partner seems to need facts and you already have some hunches as to what is going on?

Using the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, this workshop will help you begin to appreciate some of the ways your partner is “hardwired” differently from you. This indicator, one of the most widely used tools in the corporate world, will give you more of a “working model” to understand what makes you and your partner “tick” differently. With this resource you can expect to
• Laugh more when your partner is just being himself or herself
• Use the strengths and gifts of each of you in dealing with problems
• Find a resource for understanding recurring conflicts, and
• Understand what your partner needs to operate.

Suggested Reading: David W. Keirsey and Marilyn Bates, Please Understand Me, Prometheus Nemesis Book Company, 1985. $11.

All participants need to take the Myers-Briggs Questionnaire before coming to the workshop. It may be purchased at the time of registration for $11 or it may be obtained on the Internet. Go to Dr-Jim.com (please note the hyphen). Click Questionnaires in the left column. Click the line that says “Take the MBTI online.” Obtain a password by filling out the form and paying $5 by credit card. Complete the questionnaire and bring a copy of the results to the class.

PTCL262 • Sex in the City...of God
Janice Smith Ammon and Hui Chen
Mondays, 7:00 pm - 8:30 pm
November 8 to December 6, 2004

This is a class for single women of all ages. We will explore the joys and challenges of being a single woman of faith in New York City. Topics will include faith, church, spirituality, careers, friendships, dating, relationships, and sex. We will explore how to deal with loneliness and the desire for intimacy and children. The class will provide a safe place for sharing, support, and growth. Being a single woman can provide wonderful opportunities, but it can also create some tough challenges. We hope to explore all these things in the light of God.

PTCL263 • Interpersonal Communication and the Christian Life
Janet L. Weathers
Tuesdays, 7:00 pm - 8:30 pm
November 9 to December 7, 2004

Whatever our age, we constantly influence others through verbal and nonverbal communication whether we want to or not. Our moment-by-moment communication affects the health of each group and community in which we participate. Because communication is such an integral aspect of human existence, it is important to consider interpersonal communication in the light of Christian faith.

Through brief lectures, group discussion, and self-assessments, we will reflect theologically on the communication process. We will identify individual communication strengths and weaknesses and focus on practices for improving the health of the communication environments in which we live, work, study, and worship.

Youth and adults of all ages are encouraged to participate in this inter-generational program.

PTCL268 • Learning to Live with Limitations
Rev. Dr. Thomas K. Tewell
Wednesdays, 7:00 pm - 8:30 pm
November 10 to December 15, 2004

New York City is a place that stretches boundaries and limits. It is a place where people tend to work faster and faster and harder and harder. It is a place that seduces us into thinking that “anything is possible!” One can sing at the Metropolitan Opera, dance on Broadway or become a multimillionaire in the financial world. However, this philosophy is not the philosophy of the Bible! In fact, the Bible speaks of God-given limitations which God has placed in our lives. These limitations can either be a blessing or a curse for us, depending on how we face them. For example, have you ever stopped to think that there are only 24 hours in a day and that all human beings have a limited amount of time to live on the earth? All of us need rest, Sabbath and the realization that some things are “off limits” to us. We will also explore the limits of success, freedom and material possessions. We can either rebel against these God-given limitations, as Adam and Eve did in the Garden of Eden, or we can learn to accept them and experience the freedom that comes from a life of obedience to God’s will.

PTCL302 • Depression Revisited
Janet Gibbs
Sundays, 9:30 am - 10:45 am
November 7 to December 12, 2004

Are you depressed? Is a family member depressed? Is a good friend depressed and doesn’t know it? Janet Gibbs, psychoanalyst in private practice, will cast light on this dark subject during the second term. She will talk about the critical aspects of depression that we all experience from time to time in a variety of ways: disappointment and loss, anxiety and anger, and mourning and grieving. Most important, she will show how we can learn and benefit from these powerful emotions, and perhaps as we look back through that tunnel of despair, will be able to say, “By God’s grace I have grown stronger for having been there.”

PTCL321 • Faith and Language in the Public Arena
Robert F. Smylie
Sundays, 11:15 am - 12:30 pm
November 7 to December 12, 2004

This class will examine and explore how worldviews have shaped the policies of empire and states, particularly in response to global events. Through history, worldviews and religious assumptions have been intertwined and have shaped each other. In recent years, phrases such as 9/11, “the Clash of Civilization,” “absolute evil,” and “Violence in God’s Name” have become part of our vocabulary. What is less obvious is that age-old concepts, often the basis for theological divisions within the Christian church, have also reemerged. These include Manicheanism (dealing with the nature of good and evil), Millennialism and Apocalypticism (dealing with the end of history), Antinomianism (positing the role or rejection of the rule of law), Gnosticism (dealing with a complex mix of the possession of truth, evil and innocence), Messianism (chosen-ness for destiny or mission), and Machiavellianism (the use of power in public affairs). The course will explore basic established Christian theological and ethical norms/values. It will examine the concepts noted above in light of traditional norms, hopefully simplifying their meaning and probe their implications in light of contemporary world affairs and public policy.

Class size: 20

A packet of resources will be provided for reading. $10.

PTCL322 • Spiritual Passages: Growing in Grace
Joy Carol
Saturday, 9:00 am - 3:00 pm
November 20, 2004

We live in a society that fears the aging process and rarely values the wisdom of its elders. We all experience dramatic changes as we move through childhood, adolescence, first maturity, middle age, and elderhood. We may not be aware, however, of the patterns that unite the diverse stages of our lives. We may not be able to connect different parts of our lives nor to understand and appreciate the possibilities for future direction and growth that will help us to live life more fully.

In this one-day workshop, we examine significant moments and events of each phase of life, the people who guided and influenced us during each period, and what each phase contributed to the continuum of our lives. We look at spiritual exercises that help us harvest the experiences of our life at all ages. We also work on discovering future directions for growth, forgiveness, understanding, and re-contextualizing our lives. In the process, we may learn what is our greatest potential, our authentic self. And we may learn how we can unleash new energies for spiritual development and creativity and develop our unique gifts and special contributions that we can make in the world.

Church History

CH322 • Women Who Shaped Christianity
Hui Chen
Sundays, 11:15 am - 12:30 pm
November 7 to December 12, 2004

They were martyrs who faced the beasts, empresses who directed the course of history, mystics who inspired devotions and piety, and mothers who molded the lives of kings, bishops, and theologians. In ways often not acknowledged, women have had powerful and significant roles in shaping the identity and the doctrines of Christianity. This course will offer a glimpse of how some of the “Mothers of the Church,” individually and collectively, lived out and fought for their faith, and in so doing, participated in defining our faith. We will also consider the implication of their examples on both church doctrines and gender roles in our own time.

Literature and the Arts

LA101 • Creative Writing
Emily Dunlap
Section I: First and Third Tuesdays
November 2, 16 and December 7, 21, 2004
Section II: Second and Fourth Tuesdays
November 9, 23 and December 14, 2004
4:00 pm - 5:15 pm

Continuation of the course begun in Term 1. See above.

One fee for the year: One materials fee is charged whether entry is in September or April.

LA222 • The Architecture of the Church through History
Brian R. Percival
Tuesdays, 7:00 pm - 8:30 pm
November 9 to December 7, 2004

Throughout the ages many influences and events have affected the design and construction of church architecture. These have included not only liturgical considerations and requirements, but also social, historical, geographical, economic, and above all, technological developments. From the earliest attempts to incorporate Roman technology and models with early Christian requirements, to the use of steel, concrete and glass in our own day, these five illustrated lectures will introduce some major themes in the design of Christian church architecture from the time of Constantine (313 AD) to the present, with important stops in between.

Each lecture will be accompanied by a list of recommended readings.

LA223 • The Music of George Frideric Handel and Johann Sebastian Bach
James Balmer and Mary Nelson
Tuesdays, 7:00 pm - 8:30 pm
November 9 to December 7, 2004

This course will study the sacred works of the Baroque period. As we approach Advent, special emphasis will be placed on Bach’s Magnificat and Handel’s Messiah.

LA371 • Crime and Punishment
Roosevelt Montas
Mondays, 7:00 pm - 8:30 pm
November 8 to December 6, 2004

This course will consist of a close examination of Fyodor Dostoevsky’s masterpiece Crime and Punishment. We will pay particular attention to the way Dostoevsky’s fiction is informed by a Christian vision of the nature of man, crime, suffering, and redemption. Each class will proceed through close readings of the text and broad-based discussions about the issues and problems the book raises. Students should read the first 100 pages of the book – in the Pevear/Volokhonsky translation – before the first class meeting and expect a reading pace of about 100 pages per week.

Class size: 20

Book: Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment, trans. Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, Vintage Classics, 1992/93. $14.

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