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| Hans Holznagel |
Well, whether or not you had your morning coffee or tea, brothers and sisters, I hope what you’ve just seen has provided a little stimulant for your thinking. You’ll have an opportunity to react to this video we’ve just seen, and to other things you’ll hear this morning, in your groups this afternoon. But before we move on, let’s take just a moment to let a few of the words we heard and the images we saw sink in and, in fact, stimulate our own creative and redemptive thinking. Picture those original disciples of Jesus, all under 30 … Picture young people you know back home, and notice those among us today. … Picture them now in our churches, in gatherings like this, in churches and gatherings they envision, fully present as leaders, learners, participants, enlivening our lives; included authentically and not in a token way … Envision a church that is visible and visual as well as offering a message that is read and heard … A church that dares to rethink its forms … And did you hear Daryl, the campus minister, about what can change the world? Moments of grace, he said. Envision moments of grace that you’ve experienced, especially in church.
I thank God for the presence of youth and young adults in this church and in all of our lives, and I thank the leadership of this Conference for making young people, and everyone’s response to what they have to say, a focus of this Annual Meeting.
I bring you greetings from Cleveland, Ohio, from my colleagues at the national offices of the United Church of Christ. I especially greet you in behalf of the five national Officers of Church, whom we know as the Collegium of Officers: General Minister and President John Thomas, Associate General Minister Edith Guffey, and the three Executive Ministers, Linda Jaramillo, Joe Malayang and Cally Rogers-Witte. We are, all of us on the national staff, still energized by our days in Hartford this past June. The UCC’s 50th birthday celebration and our biennial General Synod were held in style and with enthusiasm, thanks in large part, as was noted last night, to the wonderful hospitality and hard-working assistance of 1,097 of you, the volunteers from the churches of the Connecticut Conference – including many of you in this room today. The 14,000-dozen cookies that arrived at the Hartford Civic Center in plastic tubs were more than enough to keep thousands of delegates, staff members and visitors well-fueled during the long days of celebration and deliberation. And of course they were just the tastiest example of the wide range of volunteer activities that required multiple years of planning and preparation and thousands of person-hours in behind-the-scenes and front-of-house work. Taken together, the entire five-day event was a moment of thanksgiving, togetherness, celebration and hope for this historic religious denomination. So, thank you for your generosity in making that moment possible. And thank you for your gifts to Our Church’s Wider Mission, which make possible the work of the Connecticut Conference and the work of the national and global ministries of the United Church of Christ. Davida, thank you for today’s invitation.
I’m delighted to talk with all of you today about the United Church of Christ as we near the end of this year-long 50th anniversary celebration. And I’m honored and rejuvenated to be with this panel of remarkable young adults. Rachel, Quinn, Kaji and I have met in various configurations in person, by telephone and by e-mail over the past month or so, and we’re glad finally to be all together, face-to-face, today for the first time. In a few minutes, I’ll invite them into a conversation about their journeys, and how they see the world and the church today.
But first, I want to say a few words about our history – the first 50 years of the United Church of Christ – and how our heritage may provide resources for thinking about the future of the church, including the need that Davida described last night: the need to do a better job of welcoming youth and young adults into the life and work of the church. I’m going to weave into my remarks some statements from our past and present that point us to the future: namely, phrases from The Constitution of the United Church of Christ, one of the basic documents that we share in common as a denomination of churches. Consider these three insights from its Preamble:
It just may be that paying attention to roots like these in our own faith- heritage may strengthen us and help us bear fruit.
First, then: Christ and kindred. And this is where you get to hear a little bit about my journey. Fortunately for all of us, I will not be illustrating this with the wigs and costumes from last night’s video. But since my own life spans the same 50 years as does the UCC, I want share some of my experiences, partly as a bridge from last night to this morning and partly to provide comparison and contrast to the life and times of my colleagues here on the stage.
Contrary to what you might expect from my name, I grew up neither in German Reformed Pennsylvania Dutch country, nor in German Evangelical Mississippi River country. The Holznagel name comes from my great-grandfather and great-grandmother, who immigrated to the United
States from Pommerania in the late 19th century, stayed for a couple years in Minnesota, and then moved to the state of Oregon, where many of my generation still live. The old language pretty much left the family with the first new generation born here, though the name, as you can see, was never Anglicized. Judging from the huge, ornate, German-language Bible I have inherited, and a few notations that came with it, my great-grandpa and great-grandma were apparently somewhat Lutheran. The next generation -- my grandpa and grandma -- switched over to being somewhat Methodist and quite Masonic. Meantime, on my mother’s side of the family, a similar 19th- and 20th-century American story was unfolding, with folks from a mix of European backgrounds marrying one another and attending country Methodist churches and Grange meetings. And so it was that I was born to two Methodist parents in 1957 and baptized as an infant in a baby-booming Methodist Church in Parkrose, a suburb of Portland, Oregon. I can still recall the pleasant scent of Sunday school art supplies, the sound of organ and choir, the feel of hymn book in hand, the adventure of family camp on the Oregon Coast, and the Lord’s Prayer, using “those who trespass against us.” In 1967, when I was 9, we moved from suburban Portland to a small college town, Forest Grove. There my mother went church-shopping. She didn’t care for the Methodist preacher in our new town, but she did like the one at Forest Grove United Church of Christ (Congregational). So that’s where we joined. My Mom and Dad joined a choir with dozens of young adults, while my brother and I learned the slightly different scent of another Sunday school wing and how to say the Lord’s Prayer using “debtors.” Up I went through junior choir, confirmation, youth group, and, I’ve been a UCC guy by choice ever since.
After a few years as a newspaper reporter in Oregon, my life’s journey became ever more deeply connected with the United Church of Christ. In my mid-20s, wanting to specialize as a journalist in covering religion, seeking depth in my own faith journey, and interested in East Coast adventure, I enrolled in a master’s degree program at Union Theological Seminary and moved to New York City in 1984. What a culture shock, and what a transformative time. Not just living between Riverside Park and Harlem. Not just the amazing professors at Union and across the street at Columbia and at Jewish Theological Seminary. Not just the William Sloane Coffin years at The Riverside Church. Not just all the weirdness, intensity and excitement of being a young person in New York. No, on top of all that, my Conference Minister from out west called the UCC national offices – then located in midtown Manhattan – and let them know that a UCC graduate student with writing skills was in town, in case they needed any part-time help. They did. I started taking the subway downtown to work 10 hours a week and full time summers writing press releases and United Church News articles. And then, to make a 20-year story short, my career took a turn toward full-time work in the national ministries of the United Church of Christ: in communication, mission interpretation, administrative work, and, now, just since this summer, fundraising. I feel privileged to be able to work professionally, as a layperson, for the church that I love. I love my journey through local churches; that at every turn – in Oregon, in New York, in Cleveland – they have been communities of thoughtful, faithful individuals who care for people and care about service and witness in the world – churches that welcomed me, body, soul, heart and mind. The congregations I’ve belonged to have varied in several ways – in fine UCC style – but all have had Christ at the center. In all of them, I have found kindred in Christ. And all have practiced in their own ways the great “united and uniting” vocation of the UCC, whether in openness to people of many denominational backgrounds or in working and partnering ecumenically.
Second: “creative and redemptive.”
Perhaps you noticed in last night’s DVD that the most outrageous costumes called attention to the argument that two decades – the 60s and especially the 70s – have been the most influential so far in forming the UCC’s identity as a church whose Christ-centeredness is often expressed in activism in the world. Though our activism has sometimes been controversial, it is actually quite true to the statement about Word and Spirit in our Preamble. Why does our church “look to the Word of God in the Scriptures and to the presence and power of the Holy Spirit”? The answer is “to prosper its creative and redemptive work in the world.”
You know, I think, about the extended standing ovation which the Collegium of Officers received at this summer’s General Synod during the reading of their Pastoral Letter on Iraq. And you’ve probably heard that two of them, John and Linda, delivered that letter and more than 60,000 supportive signatures in Washington earlier this month and were arrested in the process. That’s the kind of activism that the UCC has been known for since the 1960s. This past Tuesday, October 16th, in fact, was the 40th anniversary of a certain action led by religious people to protest the war in Vietnam. As with John and Linda this month, the 1967 action got religious people in trouble with the law, and it kept America debating a war in which it had become mired and from which it eventually had to find a way out.
At the time of the 1967 event I’m referring to, one of the leaders was in ministry an hour or so down the road from here. Forty-three years old and even younger at heart, he was the chaplain of Yale University, the Reverend William Sloane Coffin. He was a Presbyterian at the time – a minister of one of our now-formal partner denominations. The UCC can definitely claim him as kindred in Christ, what with the historic Yale connection, and with his eventual UCC standing as pastor of The Riverside Church. But I digress. Bill was one of three members of the clergy who stood at the front of the packed Arlington Street Church (Unitarian) in Boston on October 16th, 1967, and received draft cards that were turned in, one by one, by 214 students. In an unplanned gesture, an additional 67 students quietly burned their cards in the flame of a candle on an altar table. Cards collected at that and similar events were eventually taken to Washington, D.C., and turned in at the U.S. Department of Justice. This led Coffin, Dr. Benjamin Spock, and several others to be charged with conspiracy to violate U.S. Selective Service laws. A 1968 trial, in which they were convicted, and the ensuing appeal, in which they were acquitted, did something that Bill no doubt had hoped would result when the event was being planned: It not only kept the debate alive, but kept the public conscious of the moral and, yes, religious implications of the war.
And it involved young people. In an action. In a church.
Which brings us to Item 3: The responsibility of the Church in each generation to make this faith its own. As I said, I’m so grateful for the United Church of Christ and its congregations, which gave me a big world view; welcomed my mind as well as my heart; helped form my dreams; and led me – the church continues to lead me – into areas of faith and life and work I might never have imagined. It is my hope that our UCC constitutional principles continue to be relevant, such as faith in Jesus Christ as head of the Church, the importance of the Word of God in Scriptures, the presence and power of the Holy Spirit, and creative and redemptive work in the world. But automatically expecting the forms of church that attracted and nurtured me to do the same for people half my age makes about as much sense as expecting them to put on a 60’s wig and turn in their draft cards.
Instead, we wisely turn today to some young people to ask them about themselves and to ask them what they think.
Let me leave you, then, with two “key notes”:
First, to “think young” go back to your own church’s roots. What does it mean that Jesus Christ is the head of the Church? How do you acknowledge each other -- including people of all ages – as kindred in Christ? How do the Word of God in Scriptures and the presence and power of the Holy Spirit prosper your creative and redemptive work? Does each generation have room to “make this faith its own”?
And then, if you want to include young people in the life and ministry of your local church, you will need to find a way to get to know them. The video we just saw may help start the conversation in your church, and you’re also going to hear some thoughts on life and faith from these young people this morning. But they can’t speak for an entire generation, and they wouldn’t want to try. You’ll need to build relationships and have conversations with young people in your own place.
Will you please join me in welcoming Quinn Caldwell, Rachel Culmo, and Kaji Spellman.
