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| Seats filling at the Hartford Civic Center |
HARTFORD (06/22/2007) -- The official count, with walk-in visitors for Saturday's Synod in the City not yet counted, stood at over 8,000 delegates, guests, visitors, and volunteers -- over a thousand of the last -- who are or will be present at the 26th General Synod of the United Church of Christ in Hartford. Local Arrangements Committee member the Rev. Bonnie Bardot has already been featured in a story at ucc.org, and Connecticut Conference volunteers have warmly welcomed, and been appreciated by, their many guests.
At the Friday evening plenary, Conference Minister the Rev. Dr. Davida Foy Crabtree extended the Conference's official words of greeting, welcome, and challenge. Her remarks follow:
Rev. Dr. Davida Foy Crabtree Conference Minister
Good evening, General Synod! It is wonderful to see you gathered here at last! Standing here with me are Rev. Jonathan Lee and Sue Butler-Woodward, Co-chairs of the Local Arrangements Committee, and the team leaders of the committee. They have worked tirelessly for two years to make your visit an excellent experience. Before I say anything else, I want to acknowledge that the justice decision to move here to the Civic Center presents particular disappointments for persons who are mobility-challenged. We will all need to practice our spiritual disciplines as we convert this arena into a place filled with God’s grace!
So, welcome to Connecticut! Welcome to the city of Horace Bushnell and James Pennington, of Mark Twain, Harriet Beecher Stowe and Yung Wing, a city and state of storied heritage for our United Church of Christ!
Welcome to our capitol city, a community of people who care passionately about justice and are working hard to build a transformed city, but still remain residents of one of the ten poorest cities in the nation. Welcome to Hartford, where Thomas Hooker preached a sermon in 1638 that gave rise to the first Constitution in this nation and a major inspiration for our now-beleaguered US Constitution.
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Davida Foy Crabtree and the Local Arrangements Committee |
This is a state where our forebears in faith, believing they were right, owned slaves and committed acts of atrocity against the native peoples of this land. Yet this is also where people of our churches stood with those who had risen up against their captors on the Amistad, and where Daniel Hand, benefactor of the American Missionary Association, was raised. This is where Samson Occum, a Mohegan, became a Christian, a scholar and a preacher with a worldwide impact. This is where Henry Opukahaia was educated with the hope of returning to Hawaii as a native Hawaiian missionary. And this is a Conference with a lasting commitment to our global mission.
Yet while our heritage is over 375 years old, our thinking is not! We in the Connecticut Conference welcome you to our contemporary life as the United Church of Christ in this place. We’ve been waiting for you a long time -- Fifty years to be exact! We are thrilled you are here – so thrilled that over 1000 volunteers are standing by to make your time here very special. A warm welcome is a New England tradition. Instead of welcoming you with an apple pie or a casserole, however, we have cookies – 14,000 dozen cookies!
This Conference, with the exception of a few people who aren’t so sure, tends to love the United Church of Christ. We do all we can to support our national and global mission through Our Church’s Wider Mission and through the special offerings. We are focused on the importance of theological education for the 21st century and support our two seminaries, Bangor and Andover Newton, which, by the way, is celebrating its 200th anniversary this year! Through our global partnerships in Korea and Colombia, we seek to work for a culture of justice and peace in those nations, and give particular thanks for the transformative leadership of Ricardo Esquivia, whom I call the Gandhi of Colombia, and whom you will have a chance to hear tomorrow right here at 11:15.
We are African American, Latino, Native American, West Indian, Korean, Filipino, and European American, and many others, but we are not as culturally diverse as other Conferences and not the multiracial and multicultural Conference we want to become. We are moderate, conservative and progressive, from small country villages to affluent suburban towns to racially diverse and culturally rich cities. We are an Open and Affirming Conference and a Just Peace Conference striving to become Green.
Our average church – though of course we have no average churches! – is 360 members, almost twice that of our denomination nationally. We are the oldest and largest Protestant denomination in Connecticut. We are 246 churches with over 90,000 adult members spread across all but four towns in this state. I often say we are dense.
But we are also enlightened. We are poised for the next fifty years of our life together.
Right now we are in the midst of a celebration of Silver Lake Conference Center’s 50th Anniversary. We have been connecting to its alums and hearing stories of the way their experiences at Silver Lake affected their lives. Let me tell you one story, which is replicated, I am sure at UCC camps all across the country. I made contact with a woman who was there the first summer it opened, as I was. She is now an executive here in New England. I asked her whether she had ever been back. “No,” she said, “not in all these years. But every time I’ve had a major decision to make in my life, I have gone there in my mind to be sure I made that decision in the right way.” And tomorrow Synod in the City will be co-hosted by Val Tutson, a daughter of Silver Lake.
In honor of its 50 years, we are also engaged in a capital campaign to bring Silver Lake into its next 50 years with strength as a major center for environmental sustainability and Christian faith.
Conferences are very challenged right now as we all seek to discover the current needs of our churches in a time of immense change, and ways to ensure that we are doing all we can to keep our churches thriving. Here in Connecticut, we are discerning our core values and re-envisioning our ministry and mission. We have recently decided to seek a full time Associate Conference Minister for Youth and Young Adult Ministries. See me!
We have been working at new approaches to discernment and dialogue about controversial issues in our world and our life together. We have maintained our historic commitment to witness in the public square through a legislative advocate at the state capitol and through our advocacy on issues of universal health care, same gender marriage, the rights of immigrants, the death penalty, gambling, and the obscenity of poverty in the wealthiest state in the nation and a host of other deep concerns. We continue to be the Missionary Society of Connecticut, the oldest domestic missionary society in the nation, caring not only for our churches and pastors, but also for the society in which we live.
Our mission statement is clear:
Created by God
Called by Jesus Christ,
Guided by the Holy Spirit,
We are the Connecticut Conference,
the United Church of Christ in Connecticut.
We come together as Local Churches and
Members to equip one another
to proclaim the Gospel to the communities
of Connecticut and to the world
by teaching the Good News of Jesus Christ,
doing the work of reconciliation and justice,
and living faithfully in daily life. Amen.
And so we welcome you. We hope that while you are here, you will take some time to see our beautiful state with its rolling hills, river valleys and coastline. Visit Hartford Seminary and the Harriet Beecher Stowe Center; see the oldest art museum in the country, the Wadsworth Atheneum. Branch out a little and go antiquing in Putnam or Woodbury, fish the fabled Housatonic or Farmington Rivers, enjoy the historical museums! We hope you will make yourselves at home while you are with us.
No matter who you are or where you are on life’s journey, the Connecticut Conference welcomes you here!
