Sermon for Use During Annual Meeting

Greetings!.....to the churches of the Connecticut Conference, U.C.C.

September 1, 2003

"Each year as the annual meeting of the CT Conference draws near, the "alternate preachers" are asked to sit down and write a sermon that might be used in any local church by laypeople....to free staff and representatives from each church to attend the business sessions and worship at the annual meeting. The choice is yours to use the sermon as is, to adapt it for your particular congregation or to not use it at all. It is simply a resource and is based on the Scripture readings for Sunday, October 19th, 2003 in our United Church of Christ desk calendars.

We have spent Labor Day Weekend "working" to prepare this sermon for you. It is the first "joint writing" we have done and we pray that it does not resemble an "elephant designed by a committee". We hope we have allowed God to work through even such as we as our preaching styles are very different.......but what we have in common throughout our ministry is a deep belief in God's rich presence in our lives that guides, challenges, and carries us through the difficult as well as the joyous life moments and keeps calling and nudging us to care for others wherever we may be..

We have been mentored by some wonderful "servant leaders" and in our twenty seven years in Connecticut we were blessed with many people in the First Congregational Church in Essex and throughout the state who lived as servant leaders. We hope there were days when others might have found God working through us as well.

Godspeed in your continuing ministries....

Bette Anne & Josh Crowell
Alternate Conference Preacherse

["People of Hope" online] ["People of Hope" in PDF format]