By Rev. Taylor Croissant, Southminster United, Lethbridge

        For the past four years, I have been the editor of a new confirmation, discipleship and membership resource created by United Church Publishing House. I was invited to take on this role after expressing a desire to have a confirmation book similar to “The New Curriculum” which is always praised as one of the most successful undertakings of the United Church in the area of faith formation. The project began with the formation of a ministry practitioners consultation group to draw up a list of suggested chapters and contents, that group was made up of myself, Andrew Kinoti Lairenge, and Catherine MacLean.  Following this step, John Young, Don Schweitzer, Sandra Beardsall, and I began recruiting the top experts across the United Church to write each of the chapters:  Gary Paterson, Rob Fennell, Andrew Kinoti Lairenge, Don Schweitzer, Bill Richards, Susanne Abbuhl, YunJung Kim, Andy O’Neill, Sandra Beardsall, Phyllis Airhart, Bill Kervin, Susan Chisholm, John Young, Adrian Jacobs, and Jordan Cantwell.

“Building God’s Beloved Community” has been created to be comprehensive yet accessible; suitable for use with both youth and adult audiences. There are sixteen short chapters on a range of topics like theology, the Bible, church history, worship, polity, spiritual practice, etc.  The book would be suitable for use in a book study within congregations in addition to new membership classes.         

Please join us online for the book launch on June 23. Sign up HERE. We are very excited to bring this book to you in the hopes that it may serve to support discipleship within The United Church of Canada for years to come. Participating in the book launch gives you a discount code for Building God’s Beloved Community which can be purchased HERE