Important This Week

• Conference office closed today
• Stream the final day of General Synod online today
• Recordings available from Annual Meeting workshops

Happy 4th of July!

The Conference Office is closed today (and yesterday) for the Independence Day holiday. We hope you have a safe and enjoyable 4th of July holiday.

Sign up to attend Rev. Wanda Craner's funeral service online

A Celebration of Life for Rev. Wanda D. Craner is scheduled for July 8 at Church of the Good Shepherd UCC, 35 W. Philadelphia Ave., Boyertown. The service will be at 11:00a, with visitation starting at 10:00a. Clergy are invited to robe and process. To view the service online, click here to register. To read the obituary email we sent out after her passing, click here.

Watch General Synod online

Today is the final day of General Synod 34 in Indianapolis. All worship services and plenary sessions are being livestreamed on UCC.org. Check the schedule and access the livestream using this link. There are two plenary sessions today and closing worship this evening.

From the Addiction & Recovery Taskforce:

Addiction and the Family

One of the often-unrealized effects of the present opioid epidemic is the restructuring of many families with the grandparents raising their grandchildren. Statistics are hard to find for exact numbers but in May of 2018 60 Minutes reported that were over a million families in America with grandparents raising grandchildren due to misuse of drugs. The legal, economic and other hardships that imposes on grandparents is considerable. 

Most of our congregations have such families in our midst. Learning more about the challenges they face and the support your community has available for them is an important ministry.

Annual Meeting breakout room recordings available now

Did you have a hard time deciding which of the Annual Meeting workshops to select? Recordings are now available of all of those presentations. They are:

• Merged Ministry with Rev. Cean James
• Ministry Reimagined with Rev. Joshua Blakesley
• Renewed, Regenerated Ministry with Rev. Dr. Stephen Ohnsman
• Shared Ministry with Rev. Kevin Fruchtl
• United Ministry with Rev. Mary Etta Mest and Rev. Dr. Ben Motz

Gun violence memorial coming to St. Peter's Tohickon

Sponsored by ‘Heeding God’s Call to End Gun Violence’, a very special outdoor, visual memorial is coming to St. Peter’s Tohickon! A Memorial to the Lost® is a unique, visible education tool developed to honor victims of gun violence and their surviving families. Tee-shirts with names and dates of those murdered by gun violence during a previous year in a designated area are displayed where community members can experience in a tangible way the loss of life and disruption of lives that gun violence creates. Often, people will stop their car after driving by and return to see exactly what’s being portrayed; they will walk among the shirts, pause and pray, sometimes even finding the name of a loved one or neighbor. Come see this incredible display at St. Peter's Tohickon UCC, 1071 Old Bethlehem Rd., Perkasie – starting July 15.

Shared pastor event for churches set for August

On Saturday, Aug. 12 a workshop will be held on Zoom on "One Shepherd, Two Flocks: Advice and Guidance on Sharing a Pastor." Rev. Kevin McLemore and others will conduct a free workshop on why sharing a pastor with another congregation is a good option for many congregations in this time of pastoral scarcity. Pastor McLemore and others will share practical strategies on how to talk to your congregation about this possibility, how to find a pastor and congregation willing to do so, and how other churches are already doing it successfully. Pastors who currently pastor two congregations will join us to share both the blessings and challenges of this arrangement, and how to avoid some of the mistakes they’ve witnessed in their own settings. Click here for more information.

Glenn Rarick ordination

Click the invitation below to download a PDF to share.

Upcoming Training events

Registration is open for:

Basic Boundary Training on Sept. 14 in Schuylkill Haven. Click here for more info.

Advanced Boundary Training (Managing Pastoral Transitions) on Sept. 27 on Zoom (or view the recording of the event on your own time and complete a one-page synopsis). Click here for more information.

Advanced Boundary Training (From Gutenberg to ChatGPT: Tools, ethics, technology and best practices in the life of Church) on Oct. 18 on Zoom. Click here for more information.

Diversity Training on Nov. 8 on Zoom (or view the recording of the event on your own time and complete a one-page synopsis). Click here for more information.

60th anniversary of the March on Washington event

Join together in commemoration of the 60th anniversary of the March on Washington! Friends from across the region will join together Sunday, Aug. 27, to celebrate and remember through a modest neighborhood march (as you are able), eyewitness testimony, and worship in the historic House of Faith (the former Harold O Davis). Click here for more information.

UCC Webinar: Wildfires, climate, and a path forward

How can we address the wildfires that created a crisis in our climate changed world? Panelist John Vaillant released a book entitled "Fire Weather: A True Story from a Hotter World”; panelist Kimiko Barrett from Headwaters Economics is a wildfire research and policy analyst who has been interviewed by national news outlets. Even if you cannot make the webinar July 12 at 1:00p, sign-up, and we will send you a recording. Register now!