Rev. Jane McBride

Each June, the MN Conference annual meeting brings folks together from the over 100 UCC congregations in our state for connection, learning, and decision-making.

I lead a group in the conference called the Committee to Dismantle White Supremacy. Our job is to hold our conference accountable for living out more fully the values of inclusion and justice that we say matter to us. For this year’s meeting, we brought the possibility that we might move away from people passively hearing reports or rubber stamping decisions. Instead, we wanted to create an atmosphere of collaboration that allowed everyone’s voice to be heard and woven into a common vision.

In the past we’ve had a keynote speech and Q & A session. This year, we had a “thought partner” instead. Jessica Vasquez Torres, the Exec Director of Crossroads Anti-racism and training, walked with us throughout the whole meeting. She shared insights, told stories, asked questions and invited us into table conversations.

The meeting’s theme, “into the deep” comes from the Gospel story we heard today from Luke. The fishermen had worked all night and caught nothing. They had given up and were cleaning their nets. It was in this moment of futility and frustration, exhaustion and despair that they heard Jesus say, “Put out into the deep water and let down your nets for a catch.”

Jessica summoned us to follow Jesus into the deep water, into the unknown, beyond the moment of collapse we find ourselves in. Grounded in the work of indigenous Zen teacher Norma Wong, she prompted us to take our bearings in the present from a far horizon story, a story we hope people looking back will tell about our faithful collaboration with God and each other to birth something new.

Now we are going to hear from some of those who served as delegates to our annual meeting this year.

Kris Felbeck

For those of you who have never attended an Annual Meeting of the Minnesota Conference of the UCC, I would strongly urge you to consider it. The setting is both serene and restorative. We meet on the beautiful campus of the College of St Benedict close to St. Cloud. This place always brings me deep peace and appreciation for the many many women who lived their lives as sisters of St Benedict, as evidenced by the rows upon rows of identical tomb stones in its cemetery. We are surrounded by the silent testimony of women who served God to the best of their ability.

We sleep in quiet student dorms and share meals in the cafeteria. At mealtime I will often sit down with some strangers and leave an hour later having made some new friends. I am often struck by both our similarities and our differences. We come from small churches and from large churches, we come from an hour away and from eight hours away, some of us have full time long-term ministers, and others share a minister with another congregation, some of us have been coming to Conference for decades, and others are experiencing it for the first time. But we all come together out of a shared love for our denomination and a desire to learn and worship together before returning home.

In contrast to these recurring themes, I found that this particular Conference brought a spirit of hope and re-energizing that was especially appropriate and useful after this long winter of strife and activism. We sang songs that emerged from the many ICE protest gatherings. We dug deep into our Scriptural passage and from these ancient texts found words of comfort and hope. We shared strategies, skills and information in our workshops. We laughed and prayed and left feeling filled.

Bill Lindberg
My 4th Annual Meeting

This year – Parliamentarian. (No major controversies) but well-prepared and working closely with Conference Moderator Sara Morse.

Generally calm until it isn’t)

Preparations

Met other Board members learned about MN UCC vs. Dept. of Homeland Security re: Clergy access at Whipple for detainees and WON!

Workshops: Both extremely complex but complexity shouldn’t immobilize us to inaction!!!

Many to choose from. —- Israel Palestine long-standing interest

Fred Rogers from Northfield

Susie Hayward from Creekside UCC

Background — Rooted in Doctrine of Discovery// Settler Colonialism

Encourage us to become an Anti-Apartheid Congregation

Randee Edmundson

This was my first time and first as a delegate. Building relationships across the state with other UCC churches was important. To listen and learn, communicating our shared beliefs and differences and the chance to make greater impact through collaboration.

I attended the workshop on Lectio Divina. Lectio Divina (“divine reading”) is a traditional monastic practice of scriptural meditation involving four main steps—Lectio (Read), Meditatio (Meditate), Oratio (Pray), and Contemplatio (Contemplate). The 1 1/2 hour long shared process was healing and revealing personally. This is something I want to continue in our bible study group sometime.

Maggie George

I attended two workshops that I thought pertained to our life here. One was “Inclusive Worship with Neurodivergents: Widening the Welcome.” It was led by Craig Simonson and Hannah Campbell Gustafson, who shared case examples and lead discussion around how to welcome people with various cognitive and environmental needs including ADHD, Autism, Dementia. I was gratified to see so much of what we do here reflected in best practices around including differences in our midst. For example, talking about and educating us on how different people need different things, not having the children front and center and on camera but rather going to where they are and inviting them into conversation and finding ways to include everyone in worship. There are opportunities for us as well. Name tag use being one, it helps people with memory issues as well as visitors and newer folks.

I also attended, “Finding the words: A Public Narrative Workshop for church leaders” Jessica Vazquez Torres led this workshop. Given our interest in being a story telling church, I thought it worthwhile. Jessica shared Marshall Ganz’s background and motivation for creating the method of persuasive story telling. We used this process during our work with The Vinery and I appreciated the reinforcement I got during this workshop to have an even stronger sense of the process.

There was just one resolution to review, discuss and vote on this year: “A Resolution to Advocate for Gender-Affirming Health Care. A Resolution of Witness”

There were personal stories shared about the impact on lives of having access to gender affirming care. It is life saving and life affirming. The resolution encourages each congregation to appoint gender-affirming healthcare champions who pay attention to issues and organize the community and offer education opportunities to advocate for individual’s right to appropriate gender-affirming healthcare.

This resolution passed with 98% of the voting members.
The conference has a newly created position of Covenant Organizer and hired Re. Mallory Everhardt to that position. She will assist with this resolution to share resources and encourage collaboration in our various efforts to protect everyone’s right to healthcare that meets their gender identity needs.

Rev. Jane McBride

Thank you all. I also want to add that Rev. Jann Weaver joined us via Zoom at the meeting. Unfortunately, she and other online delegates had a very hard time participating because of problems with the tech set up. However, Jann has some really helpful notes about her experience that we are going to share with meeting organizers in order to improve for next time.

I want to close by reminding us that as a local congregation, we are “in covenant” with other UCC churches. To me this means, we take seriously what our delegates have learned and experienced and the things the rest of the church has asked us to consider. I’ll leave you with a question: how might we be truly responsive to what has been shared with us today?