Southeastern Regional Conference Minister's Report Spring 2005

The most remarkable report from the last year of Metro. Association life is the increase in the amount of our people who have been involved in gatherings of the wider church, specifically NY Conference Annual Meeting and the Stillspeaking Kick-off.

NY Conference Annual Meeting, held last June at the LaGuardia Marriott/the Bowne Street Community Church , involved more than 500 people, many of them from the NY metro area. The Sunday morning closing worship was a particularly popular gathering for UCCers from around the area. And planning for/pulling off a weekend like that... only a long list of very dedicated, creative people from the Metro. Association made it possible. Someone who has worked with NY Conference Annual Meeting over the years said to me: "Everytime a new complication came up, Metro. would just find more volunteers and creative solutions."

Isn't that what faith is about? Well done, people of God.

The Stillspeaking Kick-off at Riverside , coupled with the Fall Metro. Meeting, turned out even more of our folks, the official count in worship that night being 812. At the business meeting beforehand, and at the Kick-off program, dinner and worship, our Association, joined by Suffolk Association and visitors from further astream, showed itself enthusiastic, flexible and joyous-- what more could we hope for as a promise of the welcome we are ready to offer newcomers, no matter who they are or where they are on life's journey.


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Thanks again to all the help from so many, particularly Susan Gibson and the Riverside Church.

If NY Conference Annual Meeting was a major focus of our time in the early part of the year, the Stillspeaking Initiative obviously became our emphasis in the last half of the year. We were involved in NY Conference Annual Meeting to host our UCC brothers and sisters from across the state. We took up Stillspeaking to add to their numbers.

The Metro. Association was aiming with Stillspeaking to be a local advocate for helping our congregations understand new ways of doing church, reaching out to others, working together. The amount of excitement, pride and self-knowledge that Stillspeakinc generated still amazes me. As Geoffrey Black said to me after a meeting of the Conference Ministers: "Maybe Stillspeaking is really going to be IT-- what turns us around, gets us looking outward and doing what God has been waiting on us for."

I think the rise in UCC pride/identity has already repaid our advocacy efforts (as well as the commitments of other settings of the United Church to Stillspeaking) and will make a huge difference over time in our congregations' abilities to tell people who they are/our faith stories. This is the first step towards badly needed growth in our ability to share the good news God has given to the United Church.


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The second challenge is to keep our congregations focused and on-point vis a vis Stillspeaking. While our leaders have begun to understand, even embrace, the Stillspeaking message, for many in our pews it is going to take re-hearing/working through the promise over time and in more detail. And for folks outside our churches-- if they have even begun to notice us (don't understimate the rise in public awareness about the UCC that took place last December!), it will take repetition and our locally incarnating of the Stillspeaking message for it to begin making sense/be believable. A message of grace and justice, acceptance and respect is sadly foreign to much of the cacophony we hear in our land these days.

How can we help our congregations focus on the making the most of Stillspeaking in their faith communities and in their neighborhoods? How can we encourage cooperation among our churches and with other settings of the United Church ? How can we prompt prayerful and financial generosity towards efforts that the national church is doing for us?

These extras, Annual Meeting and Stillspeaking, were all add-ons-- above and beyond the on-going work of the Association, supporting pastors and congregations through the ups and downs, celebrations and challenges of contemporary church life.

Our biggest challenge in all that we need to be doing is leadership. Finding the right situations and support for our pastors, helping them work fruitfully with their lay leaders, finding leadership for the Association, Conference and national church. It's the same struggle everywhere: to find the right people with the right skills and the time/commitment to do the work that needs to be done.

Beloved, this is church: we don't need to do it all, only our part, but we do each need to do what she or he can, and be able to trust in and count on one another (that's my loose conclusion from what Paul wrote in Ephesians about different gifts!).


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The Metro. Board of Directors, after a very low yield on last year's nominations/elections, has functioned at half capacity this year; we can see the difference, despite our best efforts, in our effectiveness. About other boards/committees, we have continued to try being honest/realistic: the ones who have work to do and are doing it, the Association is working very hard to people with the right leaders and to support their service. But the committees that do not seem to have a mission, or are not meeting, or are not missed, the Association has come to suspect have perhaps outlived their original purpose. Rather than tapping people to take positions for which they will never be called, the Nominating Committee has chosen to offer no nominations this year. (The Association may offer nominations from the floor of the Annual Meeting if it wants.) Church will not be built up either by full committees that do not meet or by regular meetings that do not change anything. Perhaps this shrinking is a natural and truthful winnowing away as the Association focuses its precious efforts on the work that it can/needs to do most.

I will leave off this report, simply by sharing my prayers:

--that our people will continue to become more involved in the United Church in settings beyond their local churches, as one way that they grow in their commitment to ministry through that local church.

--that our people will grow in their financial commitments to their local churches, which in turn will grow in their commitments to supporting the ministry of other UCC settings through OCWM.

--that in all this we will become clearer about and more cooperative in our various and shared mission purposes as the United Church, the NY Conference, the Metro. Association and our local congregations.

--that in all these settings together we can increasingly articulate the specific spiritual gift of what it means to be UCC, emphasizing our celebration of diversity and our commitments to justice.

--that greater clarity will help us to focus better/more effectively on preparing clergy, lay people and congregations to speak meaningfully the message God has given the United Church.

Through all this, our challenges and our accomplishments, I continue to feel blessed to serve among you and alongside of you.

Faithfully yours,