"Education for Ministry" four year course
An educational program offered to church members about their ministry in everyday life.
Photo by Jean Marie Angelo
An EFM class gathering at St. Simon's
From left: Ann Post; Chisara Alimole, an EFM mentor; Lorna Lewis, Senior Warden of St. Simon's, Adeline Smith; Arlene Grant; and Deacon Paulette Remppel, also an EFM mentor. Not pictured: Wilson Estil, Kaye Williams-William, and Jean Marie Angelo. The Education for Ministry (EFM) program provides people with the education needed to carry out that ministry to which baptized Christians are called.
EFM offers an opportunity to discover how to respond to the call to Christian service. The University of the South, Sewanee, Tennesse, provides the course material. A local "seminar group" is the nucleus of the Education for Ministry program. A group consists of six to twelve participants and a trained mentor who meet weekly over the course of a nine-month academic year. These meetings are usually from two and a half to three hours in length. The complete program is a four-year course. In addition to EFM groups throughout the USA, EFM is also in Germany, Great Britain, New Zealand, Australia, Canada, the Bahamas, Hong Kong, Italy, and Switzerland. Over 70,000 persons have participated in the program, and in the United States more than 22,000 have completed the full four year course. At St. Simon the Cyrenian, the first EFM program began in October 2005 with eight students. All of whom completed the program. The 2012 EFM program at St. Simon's began in September 2010 under the mentorship of Deacon Paulette Remppel and Chisara Alimole (who is from Christ the Redeemer Church in Pelham). The current students are Arlene Roberts-Grant, Ann Post and Jean-Marie Angelo (Grace Church, White Plains) Adeline Smith and Wilson Estil (Haitian Congregation of the Good Samaritan, Bronx) and Kaye Williams-William and Lorna Lewis (St. Simon the Cyrenian). |
