Conference Annual Meeting Begins!

With the Eyes of our Hearts Enlightened

The Annual Meeting of the Connecticut Conference began on Friday evening, October 20, with the melodious sound of bells. Conference Chaplain the Rev. Jared Rardin led the gathering in worship to begin the three days of celebration, exploration, worship and work which are the Annual Meeting. Moderator the Rev. Gordon Rankin called the meeting to order with a tap of the brass bell, and led the business with grace and good humor.

Initial Business

Initial business included a welcome from three pastors whose churches, with others, have joined together to host the meeting at Pomperaug High School in Southbury. The Rev. Dennis Calhoun of the Middlebury Congregational Church, the Rev. Lucille Fritz of Oxford United Church of Christ, and the Rev. Walter Pitman of the United Church of Christ of Southbury made the delegates feel right at home, particularly due to the efforts of a large number of volunteers helping around the school. Rev. Pitman even clarified the school colors so the visitors would know which team to applaud on the field outside.

Blessing the High Ropes Course

Kathy Peters

Last year Conference Minister the Rev. Dr. Davida Foy Crabtree challenged the Conference to construct a high ropes course at Silver Lake Conference Center. The churches and many individuals responded, and the course opened in time for the summer season. The Rev. Kathy Peters of Spring Glen Church in Hamden, the Chair of the Silver Lake Board of Directors, reflected movingly on the theological and spiritual relevance of the course. She told of young people who discovered unsuspected courage, and of one heavy young man who made his way gingerly over one part of the course on his bottom -- and to his amazement and wonder, his companions cheered him for his success rather than jeering him for his technique. In a lighter vein she spoke of discovering prayer -- "Oh God, please don't let me fall!" -- but especially of discovering trust in other human beings and in the God who made them.

She then led the gathering in a prayer of blessing for the ropes course and those who would use it -- a blessing that, it is clear, has already begun to grow among the people of the Conference.

The Naugatuck Valley Project

Among the special guests for the evening was Mr. John Humphreys of the Naugatuck Valley Project, who described the history of that community organizing effort and its close ties to the United Church of Christ. The Project does work with Brown Fields sites (industrial areas being put to new use), and also with strengthening the ties among its member organizations and congregations. Its membership has become increasingly diverse racially, religiously, and culturally over recent years, reflecting the changes in its home city of Waterbury.

Concern for Seminaries

Ansley Coe Throckmorton

Bangor Seminary President Ansley Coe Throckmorton and the Church of Christ Congregational in Newington Pastor the Rev. Kenneth Brookes spoke eloquently on the influence of the nearby seminaries on the churches in this state -- Coe Throckmorton invited every graduate of Bangor, Andover Newton, Yale, Harvard, or Hartford to stand, along with members of every church which had been served by a graduate of one of those schools in the last twenty years -- and continued to reveal the need. Seminary enrollments have been declining, causing both financial challenges and a declining pool of educated, ordained leadership for the church. Supported by Conference Minister the Rev. Dr. Davida Foy Crabtree, the called for continuing support of the seminaries by the local church, and for more effort to encourage promising Christians to enter the ordained ministry.

The Address of the Conference Minister

The major event of the evening was the Address of the Conference Minister, Davida Foy Crabtree (available in full on this site). For her four major points, she chose:

First, to continue where Dr. Throckmorton had led, and truly challenge the local churches to support the local seminaries. "The responsibility to care for the future of the educated clergy belongs especially to the churches: to encourage the brightest young people toward ordained ministry, to recruit students for Andover Newton and Bangor, and to provide the financial support that will ensure the best seminary education possible at our institutions. The very future of the churches hangs on this commitment."

Davida Foy Crabtree

Second, she reflected on the Conference's adaptation to its redesign two years ago. Many facets of that new configuration appear to be working, but others need to be addressed. In particular, it seems that the Associations and Regions have been overburdened in the task of recruiting leaders and interested persons for the distributed Regional Ministry Teams.

"Moving to three Conference-wide ministry teams rather than nine regional teams can retain the focus on bubble-up and on regional programming through their style of work while enabling us to have full participation and connection back to churches and associations. Another insight in this regard: the desire to move to regions evidenced a yearning for the Conference to be closer to the churches and for the churches to be closer to each other. It may well be that the yearning was not geographically rooted, but participation-rooted."

Third, she described her growing awareness of the reality of church-state relations in America, particularly in regard to a legal relationship that does not favor the church. When the Conference was subpoena'd for ecclesiastical records compiled by an Association but stored by the Conference, the Conference chose to contest the subpoena as trespassing on the free exercise of religion. The law, however, does not favor religion in such cases, and in the specific case the records were released under a negotiated settlement that provided for their confidential handling.

The larger issues, however, remain disturbing, particularly with regard to the court's response to its encounter with United Church of Christ polity: "the plaintiff’s attorney during oral argument before a judge claimed that our documents were not subject to confidentiality provisions because a committee had been responsible for them, and that committee had included laity. The attorney read the list of those who had served on the committee on ministry. The judge immediately ruled in his favor... For a judge to rule that because our work of oversight is done by a committee it is not confidential, is tantamount to his or her establishing a particular form of religion as the standard."

To close, Dr. Crabtree reflected on the strength brought by the ecumenical and international mission partnerships the Conference has formed with the Kyung-Ki Presbytery in South Korea and the Mennonite Church in Colombia. "The witness of our partners in Korea and Colombia can teach us, as can Christians in other nations. How much, we need to ask ourselves, of how I act is determined by my faith, and how much by my accommodation to the culture of the United States? What does it mean here to have the eyes of my heart enlightened, to shape my life entirely by the teachings of Jesus Christ and by my faith in God?"

She encouraged all the local churches to form their own relationships with individual congregations through these partnerships, and to experience this witness in a powerful and immediate way.

Amber's Song

The evening closed with "the Conference Minister's Hymn," a long-standing tradition in which a hymn chosen by the Conference Minister closes the address. This year Dr. Crabtree chose a song she had heard at the Silver Lake Conference Center staff show this summer, which had been written by a young woman named Amber Bigley of West Simsbury (full text). Silver Lake Director Dana Fisher and two summer staffers led the assembly in singing the delightful melody, hampered somewhat by technical glitches which prevented the words from appearing on the display screen until the final chorus.

With good-natured laughter and applause the evening ended, with another day of learning and work ahead.