Announcing On-Demand, Online Lay Education Courses
The Missouri Annual Conference of the United Methodist Church is excited to rollout Absorb, a new learning management system featuring asynchronous online learning opportunities.
Absorb is an on-demand learning platform that offers online courses on your timeline, at a pace that works for you. The goal of this learning platform is to support educational opportunities for those seeking lay certification as well as equip local church leaders on a variety of topics to support their work.
Details on how to create a FREE account and access the platform are available below. These courses are currently available on Absorb:
- Discipleship Coaching taught by Rev. Mark Statler
- Discovering Your Spiritual Gifts taught by Rev. Molly Moore
- Leading Worship and Public Prayer taught by Rev. Fabian Gonzalez
- Ministry of All Believers taught by Rob Gordon and Mike Sykuta
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How to Create a FREE Absorb Account
If this is your first time to access Absorb, please watch the instructional video and follow instructions below:
- Follow this link to: moac.myabsorb.com
- Click “Sign Up” on the right-hand side of the login page.
- Fill in all of the information on the registration page.
- Click “Sign Up” at the bottom of that page.
- From your dashboard, you can choose “catalog” to see what courses are available.
- Choose a course and click “enroll” to start your journey!
Why the change?
We have spent the past couple of years taking a hard look at laity education and how to meet the unique needs of Missouri United Methodist churches.
Members from the Conference Lay Ministry Team, in conversation with the Cabinet and Bishop Farr, determined that a new, more innovative approach to equipping and empowering laity was needed for the Missouri Conference. The following areas were identified as priorities: Courses that were more accessible, filled with contextual content and updated, more culturally aware, and prepared and led by knowledgeable instructors.
From these conversations, new learning pathways were formed that will help educate and empower laity to live into God’s call on their lives while equipping any called laity to pulpit supply and lay minister work.
As a reminder, we launched a new pathway to certified lay ministry earlier this year. You can see the full certification pathway, from Launching Lay Ministry to Certified Lay Minister, in this new document.
The freshly updated laity section of the Conference website includes this same information about the new learning and certification pathways. We've even created a page to answer what we anticipate will be your most common questions.
We are so grateful for you, your gifts and the way you support the United Methodist Church in Missouri.