Conference Annual Meeting
Dear Church,
As you may know, First Congregational Church of Bellingham, UCC, is part of the United Church of Christ denomination. But we are also part of our region of the UCC: the Pacific Northwest Conference, a gathering of about 70 churches in Washington, northern Idaho, and Alaska. These churches are urban and rural. Many of them are primarily white in terms of cultural, but others are mostly Japanese, Taiwanese, Samoan, or Marshallese. We’ve got larger churches and smaller churches, churches that have particular ministries for farmworker justice, for supporting rural LGBTQ+ communities, for supporting students in college towns, and many more.
Whenever I gather with the Pacific Northwest Conference, I am struck by two things. First, by how much I value the relationships with my colleagues and friends throughout the region. We have a bunch of lovely, creative, and thoughtful lay people and clergy who are together figuring out how to best hear the call of God for our churches in this region. It’s always a joy to reconnect, to hear what other churches are doing, and to celebrate, mourn, and wonder together.
Secondly, I’m always struck by the diversity in our conference. Clergy who think differently than I do, churches with radically different cultures than mine, witnesses for political and racial and class diversity, all trying to figure out how to be in right relationship with one another.
Lately, our Conference has had at least a couple of big challenges. We are trying to learn to be an anti-racist Conference, and figuring out how to best do that work, both within the existing structure of our Conference, and as we let the Spirit move us to what comes next for all of us. In addition, we’ve had a big leadership change this year- our long-time Conference Minister, Mike Denton, finished his time with us. Courtney Stange-Tregear, who has been on Conference staff for some years, is now the acting Conference Minister, but it is still feels like a season of change for some of us. And in the midst of all of that, all our churches are figuring out how to be community in this stage of pandemic, in this moment in history, in the midst of all the challenges that institutional churches face these days.
Maybe all this conversation makes your eyes glaze over, but maybe something about this project intrigues you. Whatever your initial response, I want to invite you to pray on this a bit. Because our Conference Annual Meeting is coming up, April 28-30. We’ll meet together for worship, to share community, to learn and work together. We’ll (hopefully) make some prayerful decisions about the life of our conference. Rev. Traci Blackmon, the Associate General Minister of Justice & Local Church Ministries for the UCC will be our keynotes speaker! (If you’ve never had the chance to hear Rev. Blackmon preach, let me encourage you to make it a priority!)
And here’s more good news: First Congregational Church of Bellingham is hosting this Conference Annual Meeting! Maybe you’d like to be a volunteer that weekend, offering hospitality and support to folks coming from all over the state and beyond to be together in Bellingham! But maybe you’d also like to consider being one of our delegates. Delegates represent First Congregational in these important conversations about the Conference, about our priorities, about how God might be leading us. If you think you might be interested in being a delegate, I’d love to chat with you, or you can feel free to reach out to one of our moderators! We’re hoping to have a slate of delegates to propose to the congregation at our Annual meeting on February 12, so please consider soon!
May the Spirit lead you this week- as you wonder and pray about your role in the Conference, and as you open your heart to the Spirit’s movement, in big and small ways.
Blessings to you from your church, and from your conference!
Davi
