The Minnesota Conference UCC has made a long-term commitment to becoming an anti-racist, multi-racial, multi-cultural conference. A first step in carrying out this commitment is to deepen understanding of the nature of racism and how it operates. Then, in light of new understandings, decisions can be made about the responses we are called to make.
Church Council Endorses Earth Charter Community Summit
At its August 25, 2004 meeting, the Church Council voted that the United Church of Christ in New Brighton become a partner and friend with the Twin Cities' 2nd Annual Earth Charter Community Summit. This choice seems a fitting choice according with our commitment to be a "just peace" congregation. For more information, visit the website: www.earthcharter-minnesota.org.
The Earth Charter's 16 principles are:
1. Respect Earth and life in all its diversity
2. Care for the community of life with understanding, compassion, and love.
3. Build democratic societies that are just, participatory, sustainable, and peaceful.
4. Secure Earth's bounty and beauty for present and future generations.
5. Protect and restore the integrity of Earth's ecological systems, with special concern for biological diversity and the natural processes that sustain life.
6. Prevent harm as the best method of environmental protection and, when knowledge is limited, apply a precautionary approach.
7. Adopt patterns of production, consumption, and reproduction that safeguard Earth's regenerative capacities, human rights, and community well-being.
8. Advance the study of ecological sustainability and promote the open exchange and wide application of the knowledge acquired.
9. Eradicate poverty as an ethical, social, and environmental imperative.
10. Ensure that economic activities and institutions at all levels promote human development in an equitable and sustainable manner.
11. Affirm gender equality and equity as prerequisites to sustainable development and ensure universal access to education, health care, and economic opportunity.
12. Uphold the right of all, without discrimination, to a natural and social environment supportive of human dignity, bodily health, and spiritual well-being, with special attention to the rights of indigenous peoples and minorities. 1
13. Strengthen democratic institutions at all levels, and provide transparency and accountability in governance, inclusive participation in decision making, and access to justice.
14. Integrate into formal education and life-long learning the knowledge, values, and skills needed for a sustainable way of life. 15. Treat all living beings with respect and consideration. 16. Promote a culture of tolerance, nonviolence, and peace.
For more than fifty years, the interdenominational gifts to One Great Hour of Sharing have provided timely disaster relief for victims of floods, earthquakes, hurricanes, droughts, and other natural disasters anywhere in the world, including here in the United States. Even after the emergency is over, our gifts keep working, helping people to rebuild long after much of the world has forgotten. Our gifts help impoverished communities to develop new sources of food and water, and to improve their standards of health and literacy. Still other gifts provide modest loans to the poor seeking to start small businesses, help to resettle refugees of famine and war, and support ministries with homeless children in the inner cities of the world.
Green Tape Offerings of food, personal hygiene items, and cash help to keep the Ralph R. Reeder Food Shelf in New Brighton stocked for persons in need. Most of us at UCCNB are blessed to be able to share our abundance with those less fortunate. Even though the economy appears to be recovering, the people living on the margins - the unemployed, the working poor, and the homeless - have not yet seen improvement in their fortunes. The needs of these persons are met through our local food shelves, which continue to struggle to maintain sufficient supplies of food and personal hygien items to keep their clients going. The third Sunday of every month is Green Tape Sunday. Please bring your generous gifts to church on Green Tape Sunday or any other day!
Philippine Connection
The Minnesota Conference of the United Church of Chirst has been engaged in an ecumenical and global partnership with the churches of the Southeast Mindanao Jurisdiction (SEMJur) of the United Church of Christ in the Philippines for nearly 20 years. We have enjoyed hosting visitors from SEMJur, while clergy and laity from the Minnesota Conference and students from United Theological Siminary have visited our partners in Mindanao. (Members of the UCC in New Brighton have visited several times.) We have sought ways to support each other's ministries, including the donation of books for UCCP school and church libraries.
Philippine Task Force
The Philippine Partnership Task Force is currently focused on providing the relationships and resources that will help us strengthen our shared ministry of advocacy and theological dialogue. Our 2005 Conference Annual Meeting passed a resolution joining our voices with those of our partners in calling for complete investigations of the ongoing and systematic human rights violations (HRV) in the Philippines. These HRV have directly impacted our partners; UCCP clergy and other church workers are among those who continue to be harassed, detained, and murdered. While we are most familiar with the instances involving UCCP-related persons, such violations are carried out against persons from all walks of life; the uniting factor is their political involvement with progressive political parties, and one in particular, a grass roots "people first" party strongly opposed to the current administration, which has led to its being labeled a national security threat.
The Minnesota Conference resolution was adopted by General Synod 25 in Atlanta, and became part of the materials used as representtives of the UCC participated in several fact-finding tours in the Philippines last summer, visiting "hot spots" and learning first-hand of the daily struggles our partners and their neighbors face in this time of increased threat and intimidation. Reports form those tours provided the content for ecumenical advocacy and legislative meetings in Washington, D.C. in late August.
Current Projects
Working closely with United Theological Seminary, we help host students from the Philippines who are enrolled as Campbell Scholars, pursuing a one-year program of professional and personal enrichment.
Inspired by questions from SEMJur's Partnership Committee and our own Conference Board of Directors, we are discerning and clarifying our partnership as a ministry of resource sharing, prayer, education, theological dialogue, and advocacy. The hard question alway concern faithful and effective responses to immediate needs as well as developing long-term, covenantal relationships.
Responsing to an invitation to attend the UCCP General Assembly (the equivalent of our General Synod), four people from Minnesota (including UCCNB's Glen Herrington-Hall) will attend on behalf of the Partnership Task Force and the MN Conference. In addition to the GA meeting, they will have several opportunities for exposure to and immersion in lumad (indigenous people) and Moro (Muslim) concerns, the peace process, and land conversion issues. They will also meet with SEMJur leadership in a fellowship time at the end of their visit.
Reflections after the MN UCC Annual Meeting
by S. Ebbers
I have just returned home from the MN UCC Conference Annual Meeting and had my nap (conferences are hard on introverts). Beth asked the delegates from UCCNB to write reflection about the conference. I can’t report about controversial resolutions that provoked passionate debate. Since it’s not a General Synod year, there were no resolutions. The Keynote speech, Bible Study sessions, and worship were wonderful. They both praised and challenged our denomination. Yvette Flunder, who led the Bible Studies, said that “as an African-American, same gender loving, SHORT clergy woman I thank God for this church.” Echoing the theme of the Annual Meeting, she said “We need to gather in and love this great, prophetic church, with all its issues, errors, etc.” Keynote speaker Susan Thistlethwaite noted that God is infinite, we are finite, so we are always wrong (she meant that for Christians of all stripes). It seems worth pondering – it can be a freeing thing to know that we don’t have to get it all right (especially as individuals), that we can speak and act boldly, but have no room for arrogance or self-righteousness. She went on to say that the more diverse your community, the more revelation you can hear; greater diversity mitigates against finitude. Challenging indeed!
In the midst of the inspiration and the challenge, the Annual Meeting was disturbing. I am proud of the UCC. I am proud of the Minnesota Conference. I am proud of UCCNB. These church structures are filled with people trying to live out the good news as I understand it: extending Extravagant Welcome in the name of a loving God, and going forth to deliver good news to the poor… you know the rest. You and I come to this church because we believe in its mission. Yet our denomination has cut staff and programming drastically in recent years. Our Minnesota Conference, recently restructured, is facing such a sobering budget picture that they may have to do the same thing yet again. Other denominations have also had to undergo radical restructuring.
So I came away wondering: WHY DON’T WHITE MAINSTREAM AND LIBERAL CHRISTIANS SUPPORT THEIR CHURCHES AND DENOMINATIONS AS WELL AS SOME OTHER CHRISTIAN COMMUNITIES DO? You might respond, with some justice, “WHY ASK US?” UCCNB participates in all 5 of the special offerings that support the various structures of our church. Unlike about half the churches in the MN Conference, we DO turn in our OCWM pledge, so the Conference knows what contribution it can count on from us as it prepares its budget. (Just imagine if your employer assured you that you are going to get paid, but refused to tell you how often, when and how much.) UCCNB met our budget goals for the new fiscal year. We give generously to many causes, local and beyond. So why don’t I just assume that the financial problems of the Conference and the denomination are someone else’s problem?
I can’t stop gnawing on the statement from my friend who is an Associate Conference minister in another state: “The UCC is the second wealthiest denomination per capita, but the lowest in giving per capita of the mainline denominations.” What is at stake? Additional cuts in the Minnesota Conference budget will have direct consequences for its ability to support the ministries of the churches and of the denomination: to guide churches through transitions and leadership crises, to support the preparation of new ministers, to lead our cooperative ministries for children and youth, to ensure the upkeep and vitality of Pilgrim Point, AND to be a visible presence of the Still-Speaking God in a world that seems determined to silence or drown out that voice for which we in the UCC are always listening. Many delegates at the annual meeting said that such cuts are unacceptable, that we need to interpret the situation to our churches to help them understand that we all need to better support the work of the Conference. Some made moving and dramatic individual pledges. But individuals can’t solve this problem. Only the collections of individuals that we call churches can decide how much they will support their ministries– at the local, conference, and denominational levels.
In general, conservative Christians give money to their churches at a much higher ratio of their income than we do. So do African-American Christians. There is an expectation that those communities will support their churches at a level that allows them to not only sustain their work and their message, but expand them. Why DO conservative Christians seem have a lock on air time in the American media? It’s surely more complex than this, but which Christian communities have money? Much of that money is given by folks with fewer resources than many of us in more liberal churches, but who believe strongly in the mission of their churches, and therefore respond joyfully by tithing to God.
The tithe was not and is not the “left-overs.” It was 10% of the harvest, given up front. Our own Kay Welsch spoke up at the Annual Meeting and talked about the denomination she grew up in, in which the tithe was the expected baseline gift, and pledges to the church were gifts over and above that. That’s also how both Carolyn and I were raised. We believe in the ministry of our church, in the mission of our seminary, in the work of the Conference, and in the other causes to which we give each month. We are not wealthy (by American standards). But we can give our tithe and still have enough to live quite comfortably, letting go some of the extras considered essential in our current culture.
We in white liberal churches are seldom challenged to pray, to reflect, to consider whether our faith is calling us to that kind of tangible commitment which is often the norm in other Christian communities. Not everyone has the resources to tithe in money. But if all in the UCC adopted another biblical principle -- giving “first fruits” -- pledging up front a percentage of income and/or time back to God through the church, I don’t believe our church structures would be in the bind they are in. Our Conference, our denomination would have the resources to support OUR ministries, and to make OUR face of Christianity more visible to the world. I want the UCC to be able to continue courageously seeking to listen to what God is calling us to do in our time and to respond by practicing the gospel of inclusion, and by working toward wholeness for all God’s world. During the Annual meeting our friend Jonathan Morgan asked “Have you EVER had too little because you gave too much? Have you ever known anyone who ended up without enough because they gave too much? I thought it was a question worth asking.
