What is Synod School?
Synod School is a learning and personal enrichment experience for people of all ages. It seeks to create an environment of hospitality, healing and hope. The week is designed for laity, clergy, individuals and families with classes and activities for adults, youth, and children.
People come from all over the country with their friends and families to share in this week of worship, study, play, and life together.
It is an opportunity to learn something new, to continue conversations begun by key speakers with others over meals or a board game, to share talents of creativity and music, to worship without being in charge, to be energized for service, and to enjoy not having to cook for a week.
For more information about Synod School please contact Pastor Katie Estes at kestes@firstpresgreenbay.org or our Director of Children, Youth and Families, Joel Morien, at ce@firstpresgreenbay.org or call (920) 437-8121.
Why should I attend?
Come…
— To participate in a unique experience of Christian community as we worship, study, play, and live together;
— To grow in faith through action, relationships, and a centering of the spirit;
— For continuing education, for a special family experience, or for individual growth;
— To take it all in, then return home to share and serve.
All Are Welcome
As a community of people striving to love God and one another we celebrate and uphold the divine image in each and every person that attends.
This understanding is the foundation of Synod School’s commitment to be a place of welcome, affirmation, and celebration of all LGBTQIA+ people.
Regardless of where you are in your journey of becoming; out of the closet, in the closet, still figuring things out, or somewhere else, Synod School is a place where you can connect, grow, and thrive!
2025 Synod School Theme: “Re-Forming ‘Normal’: Expanding Hope“
Synod School 2025 was a weeklong, intergenerational Christian education experience centered on the theme “Re-Forming ‘Normal’: Expanding Hope,” inviting participants to rethink what “normal” looks like for the church, the world, and their own lives in light of the gospel.
Through daily worship, classes, and fellowship opportunities for all ages, people gathered from across the country to explore how faith can expand their imagination for justice, community, and personal renewal, creating space for rest, learning, play, and deepened hope in God’s presence among them.
“Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.”
Romans 12:2
2024 Synod School Theme: More Than We Can Imagine
“Now to God who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to the power that is at work within us, to God be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen”
Eph. 3-20-21
The group that gathered to plan for the first Synod School event seventy years ago could not have imagined what brings us to Synod School in 2024. It has become more than they could have imagined!
There were 544 people in attendance which included 11 people from our congregation. Multi-generation families, tie dye, more classes proposed than we had room for, “the best week of the entire year”….
As we look to the future of the Church, we explored what will it look like? What innovations are already happening? What is yet to come? As we think about the lives of the young people in our lives, what will their futures be? What innovations will renew their lives and ministries? God is already doing things we cannot even imagine. What a difference can that make in our lives and ministries?
We explored all these questions and pondered the answers throughout the week.
2023 Synod School Theme: Our Family Story
…All Jesus did that day was tell stories—a long storytelling afternoon. His storytelling fulfilled the prophecy: I will open my mouth and tell stories; I will bring out into the open things hidden since the world’s first day.”
Matthew 13:34-35-34-35 MSG
The theme for Synod School 2023 was “Our Family Story.” As living and breathing entities of Christ, we are each natural storytellers—whether we believe so or not.
Each experience we carry is sewn into the tapestry that our ancestors created, and these experiences carry us forward toward relationships and connection with others. Stories from the Bible connect us as children of God.
We shared time together learning about the differences between historical, literary, and theological “chairs” and why, to fully understand stories from the Bible, we must take time in all three chairs to better know the rich characters and lessons that we have been given.
In a time when biblical stories are picked apart to suit a particular message, we gathered and studied familiar stories in new ways in hopes of gaining a new closeness with God, and each other.
2022 Synod School was themed “Experiencing Belonging“
…so we, who are many, are one body in Christ, and individually, we are members one of another.”
Romans 12:5