The History of

       the Love Of God Program

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LOG is one of many adaptations of the Roman Catholic Cursillo (pronounced cur-SEE-o) Movement which originated in Spain in 1949.  Cursillo de Christiandad means "little course in Christianity."  Cursillo was lay-led and created to more fully integrate men into the church.

 

The Cursillo Movement crossed the ocean to American Catholics in the 1950's and since that time, many different expressions of the program have been established in Protestant churches around the country including the Walk To Emmaus in the United Methodist Church and the Great Banquet in the Presbyterian Church.

 

In the mid 1980's, the senior high youth group of Novato Presbyterian Church in Novato, California attended a "Search" retreat sponsored by a Cursillo community in the Reno, Nevada area.  They returned home with the intention of starting a similar program only to find that a local Catholic church was already using "Search" as the name for one of their programs.  The Novato group decided to call their new program "Love Of God."

 

In 1988, while Rev. Terry McBride was serving as the associate pastor of Goleta Presbyterian Church in Goleta, California, he learned of LOG and was subsequently invited to take a team of four youth to experience the Novato group's LOG #5.  The following spring, Novato sent a team to give the gift of LOG to the Goleta church.

 

In 1997, after moving from California to Indiana to become the associate pastor of First Presbyterian Church in South Bend, a team of eighteen youth and three adults flew from California to plant LOG here in Michiana.  First Presbyterian sponsored eighteen LOG weekends during 1997 – 2005.

 

Michiana Youth Ministries was formed in 2005 in order to grow the LOG program and offer it to more youth of the Michiana area.  Ethan Swinehart became the executive director of Michiana Youth Ministries and LOGmichiana in the fall of 2021.

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