Courses for the year

Singing with the Spirit

Rev. Carol Blow

Tuesday, October 6th

Wednesday October 7th

7:30-8:30 PM EST

Two evenings of presenting in a historical context with videos, singing and praising God in a different way than we/you are accustomed to in a Mass setting. The sessions also include gospel music in a Eurocentric manner and how we change the tempo and context to become our own.

A short history of gospel music in the African American Catholic Church.

Sister Thea Bowman F.S.P.A., Ph.D., states that the gift of “African Americans sacred song from the African mother continent, African men and women through the middle passage throughout the Diaspora through to the Americas carried the African gift and treasure of sacred songs to the Americas African men and women through sacred songs and chants that reminded them of their homelands and that sustained them in separation and in captivity songs to respond to all life situations and the ability to create a new song to answer new needs.”

Black sacred song is a soulful song –

1. Holistic: challenging the full engagement of mind, imagination, memory, feeling, emotion, voice, and body;

2. Participatory: inviting the worshipping committee community to join in contemplation, in celebration and in prayer;

3. Real: celebrating the immediate concrete realities of the worshipping community grief - or separation, struggle or oppression, determination or joy - bringing that reality to prayer within the community of believers;

4. Spirit filled: energetic, engrossing, intense;

5. Life giving: refreshing, encouraging, consoling, invigorating, sustaining.

Father Clarence Rivers explains that a singer (any singer) who performs without feeling lacks soul.

Becoming UnChurched

Cassie Erkens/Bishop Marty/Rev. Corein

Classes will be held on Tuesday Evenings

November 10th. 7:30-9:00 PM EST

November 17th 7:30 -9:00 PM EST

November 24th. 7:30-9:00 PM. EST

Click here to register for this class.

Description: The number of people checking “none” when surveyed about their church, their religion, or their belief in a greater power of any kind has been increasing at an alarming rate for years. The question isn’t who are they? or where are they going? Rather, the question is what can we, a small group of committed souls in a fledgling faith community, do about it? This session explores the inescapable tensions that exist within and around a faith community (e.g. religion vs. spirituality, faith vs. doubt, authority vs. individual conscience, grace vs. judgment, to name just a few) and then offers ideas to leverage ’tension’ as the solution through intention, attention, retention, and invention.

The Series: Becoming Unchurched

Overarching Essential Question: What can we, a small group of committed souls in a fledgling faith community, do about it?

Session 1: Unchurched
Session 2: Becoming
Session 3: Becoming Unchurched / Social Justice

The Torah and the Sermon on the Mount

Rev. Rosemary Burdick

“Do not think I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them”. Matthew 5: 17

Internalizing the Law

From an external law to a law of the heart!

All of these courses are $25.00 each.

Send Checks to:

OLD CATHOLIC COMMUNION, INC.

P.O. BOX 143

Oldsmar, FL 34677

Please make the check out to IOCS and include the name of the course you are taking in the memo line.

For the 2026-2027 school year.

Fall semester