Conference Minister Corner

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Rev. Linda Hirst | Transitional Associate Conference Minister

Happy Epiphany! A dear friend of mine has two holidays she celebrates with great joy every year. One is Groundhog Day and yes, she has made several pilgrimages to Punxsutawney, PA. The other one is Epiphany. Early on she told me that on the night of Epiphany she heads outside to look at the stars (the star?) and make a wish: hoping, believing and trusting that God will give her what she wants or needs that year. When she first told me of this tradition, I did not correct her use or understanding of Epiphany; did not say, “Well, actually Epiphany is when the wise men discovered the Christ Child and he was made manifest to the world…” My friend was a Christian Education Director at our church. She knew what was what. This was just an extra layer. Besides, didn't the star give us all what we needed or wanted or didn’t know we needed or wanted on that night so long ago? A little saving from ourselves (or a lot), more hope than we could hope for, and everything else that Christ brings us? All wrapped up in a baby which today the world holds dear.

...Read the full article here.

Save the Date!

The Anti-Racism Ministry Group of the NH Conference will host the fourth annual Harriet Ward Memorial Anti-Racism Speaker Series on the afternoon of April 12th, 2026, at the Congregational Church of Amherst. 

Mark your calendars and stay tuned for our 2026 Speaker announcement! 

Questions? Contact Tivvi Pare or Rev. Mark Koyama.

Conference Accounting Books

Closing Friday January 16, 2026

Happy New Year!



Please note that the Conference will be closing the 2025 books for church donations in mid-January. All OCWM, NIN, OGHS, STC or Christmas Funds must be received at the Conference office by January 16th to be counted towards the church’s goals in 2025. If you are sending 2026 donations, please note that on your paperwork. Please contact Lydia Frasca with questions!

Register for an opportunity to grow and strengthen your skills for leadership!

Ministry21 has three upcoming course offerings, each addressing an aspect of leadership in the church in a way that speaks directly to the specific realities encountered by churches and faith leaders in NH and VT—the two most secular and oldest states in the country. Ministry21 courses are developed to offer support for learning and space for growth to all leaders of the church—lay, authorized, and Members in Discernment. Our goal through each class is to foster covenant, connectivity, and learning for all leaders within our two conferences.

Meeting People Where They Are: Exploring Context, Theology, and Ministry that Propels Us into Ministry Outside of the Church with the Rev. Gayle Murphy, founder of the New Things Task Force and a clergy person who has spent the last seven years learning how to minister to those identified as “the nones.” --- This course conveys the very foundation for why Ministry21 exists—the realities of age, secularity, volunteerism and more—and explores the hope that exists when imagination and a heart for creative risk-taking is present in a congregation. While it will not provide all of the answers to success in outreach, this course will provide many examples of effective and thriving ministries (a note of caution…they look different than what you expect…).

Course meets: Jan 17, Feb 14, Mar 28, May 9 

Pastoral Care and Ethics with the Rev. Jonathan New --- This is an essential course for anyone engaged in or considering engagement in licensed ministry or who is an MID needing coursework in the theology and ethics of Pastoral Care as well as seeking to deepen pastoral identity. It will also lay out a framework for healthy caregiving for lay-leaders seeking to develop congregational care goals. For ordained clergy, this is a space to look at pastoral caregiving through a different lens and to ask critical and brave questions of your existing practice. Drawing on the wisdom of literature and poetry and the writings of authors such as Howard Thurman and Henri Nouwen, this class will invite students to think creatively and imaginatively about the tensions between self and other, speech and silence, desire and detachment. The goal is to help participants find the paths that will lead them into wholeness and integrity in ministry.

Course Meets: Jan 24, Feb 28, Mar 21, Apr 18

A NEW YEAR, A NEW START,

Every Positive Action Matters!

"Different Roots, Common Dreams" is an exhibit of color photographs on display from January 4 - March 31 in the Williamson Gallery, 4th floor, Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center (1 Medical Center Drive, Lebanon, NH).

Since 2012, photographer and member of Peace with Justice Advocates, Becky Field, has been documenting the lives of our state’s immigrant and refugee communities. The photos show immigrant families, children, workplaces, and traditional ceremonies. The opening reception is Tuesday, Jan 13, 4:30-6:00pm in the gallery; it's free, accessible and open to all. For more, contact Becky, 603-568-3174.

What Each of Us Can Do In 2026

Moral clarity exposed the corruption of 2025. Moral action can build something better in 2026.

By William J. Barber & Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove

As we look back at a year when every day was punctuated by the news of mendacity performed in plain sight, voices of moral clarity stand out as touch points to make sense of what has happened over the past twelve months. Bishop Mariann Budde stood in the pulpit of the National Cathedral at the inaugural prayer service in January and made the most basic of pastoral pleas for the President to show mercy – especially to immigrants, the poor, and the marginalized. Trump called her exhortation “nasty” because mercy was not on the agenda of a regime that came to power promising unprecedented prosperity for the people but only saved seats for billionaires in the Capitol rotunda on day one. The simple clarity of the Bishop’s plea unveiled the thin veneer of the heralded “golden age.”

In response to an executive order targeting LGBTQ people early this year, administrative judge Karen Ortiz replied to the 185 other judges copied on an email from her supervisor, “Please RESIST. DO NOT COMPLY WITH THEIR ILLEGAL MANDATES.” Her email account was shut down, but she continued to speak with moral clarity. “I can live on cornflakes and community at the end of the day if it means that my soul is intact,” she told the New York Times.

By February, federal workers had organized a lunch-time speak out in DC against billionaire Elon Musk’s effort to get inside of government agencies, fire people without cause, and extract the data that companies like those he owns find so valuable. Bishop Barber stood with the workers to remind them that no one can be a king unless we bow.

Over the course of this year, millions of Americans stood together to say, “No Kings.” Our friend Joan Baez even joined Jesse Wells to sing it as an anthem for the movement:

If 2025 was about coming together to say, “No,” the work of 2026 is to reach the untapped people power of a true populist movement in this moment. As a people we are vulnerable to hucksters and social media manipulation because we allow almost half of Americans to live with their backs against the wall - working full time and living in cars, in the shadows without documentation, having to chose between rent and health insurance. Absent leadership that would challenge corporate interests and demand justice, a plurality of eligible voters believed the false promises of politicians who blamed immigrants, scapegoated minorities, and promised prosperity. Donald Trump did not create this scheme, but he saw he could benefit from it. The Wall Street Journal estimates that the Trump family raked in $4 billion this year alone.

As preachers we know that Jesus organized a people’s movement in the 20th century by recruiting exploited workers to tap the power of the everyday people who’d been targeted by an extractive economy. In the Galilee, where Jesus lived, the Romans used local fishermen to feed a global market for a fish paste called “garum.” A popular commodity throughout the empire, garum production led to the first recorded example of overfishing in human history. The Roman authorities didn’t just exploit the labor and tax the income of Jesus’ neighbors. They depleted the fisheries that local communities had relied on for generations.

In that context, Jesus recruited disciples for his movement with a simple mandate. “Come, follow me,” he said, “and I will send you out to fish for people.”

When the authoritarian rulers of an extractive economy used fishermen to deplete the local fisheries, Jesus went to those exploited fishermen and said, “Come fish for people.” No one is in a better position to recruit people for a movement to change an unjust system than the people who’ve experienced the injustice first hand. Not everyone can preach to the President, refuse to obey unlawful orders, or maintain the integrity of institutions in the midst of an authoritarian crisis. The integrity of leaders in this moral moment is crucial, and many stood tall to clarify what’s at stake. But the genius of fishing for people is that it is something each of us can do.

In the great song tradition of the spirituals, there is a hymn that says,

If you can’t preach like Peter,

If you can’t pray like Paul,

You can tell the love of Jesus…

The fundamental conviction of any true populist movement is that there’s something each of us can do. A moral movement in America in 2026 must give everyday people the tools they need to fish for people. We know that communities will be traumatized by ICE raids, millions will lose their health insurance, rural hospitals will close, data centers will drive up electricity bills, and children will come to school hungry because their families have lost SNAP benefits. Whether you drive the bus, serve the coffee, stock the shelves, fix the pipes, clean the floors, or keep the books in your community, you can fish for people. You can tell your neighbors that you see their pain. You can assure them they are not alone. You can help people understand that these are policy choices that have been made by people in public office, and you can help them make a plan to vote in the midterms.

In communities of every size and make-up, people came together in 2025 to say no to an authoritarian abuse of power. In 2026 we need a movement that tells people what they can work for as we move forward together in love and justice.

Across the country in hundreds of Congressional races in 2022, our last midterm election in the US, more people opted not to vote than voted for any candidate in any Congressional race in the country. There is an incredible untapped power in people who

feel left behind and forgotten in the US political system today. The work of 2026 is to reach them.

If you stood up to say, “No Kings,” in 2025, make a plan for how you’re going to fish for people to reconstruct democracy in 2026.

New Year’s Resolution for Congress

“This year 2026 invites the possibility of a resolution 
that is both realistic and impactful”.

by the Rev. John Buttrick, published in the Concord Monitor January 3, 2026

A new year, 2026, is about to dawn. Most of us know what that means – New Year’s Resolutions! They are made with good intentions: Go on a diet, break a bad habit, repair a broken relationship, start saving for retirement, work harder, study harder, commit to more family time. As laudable as these pledges are, they are also subject to being laughably over ambitious and short lived. It is part of the tradition of New Year’s resolutions that they are easily made and fated to fail. But many of us keep trying year after year.

This year 2026 invites the possibility of a resolution that is both realistic and impactful. The situation begging for change is Israeli government action increasing restrictions on Palestinian movement in the West Bank and banning UNRWA, the United Nations agency that cares for Palestinian refugees and their descendants. There has also been a recent week-long Israeli military operation across several West Bank cities. It has “displaced roughly 40,000 Palestinians from their homes, in what historians and researchers say is the biggest displacement of civilians in the territory since the Arab-Israeli war of 1967.” In addition, the New York Times reports the United Nations has revealed that “water and sanitation systems have been destroyed in four dense urban neighborhoods, known as refugee camps because they house people displaced in 1948 and their descendants. It added that some water infrastructure had been contaminated with sewage.” All of these actions have mostly taken place unnoticed by outsiders, while most of the attention has been focused on the Israeli Gaza war.

While this is going on, the United States has agreed via a memorandum of understanding to provide Israel with $3.8 billion per year through 2028, including $500 million per year for missile defense. In addition, “Since the start of Israel’s war with Hamas on October 7, 2023, the United States has enacted legislation providing at least $16.3 billion in direct military aid to Israel.” The Council of Foreign Relations reports that “Israel has been the largest cumulative recipient of U.S. foreign aid since its founding, receiving over $300 billion (adjusted for inflation) in total economic and military assistance.” Given this financial entanglement, it is evident that the United States is complicit in the unjust and illegal actions of the Israeli military in the occupied Palestinian territory in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

The final straw for me was the Monitor’s article on the addition of 19 illegal West Bank Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian territory. It seems logical and necessary to advocate for a New Year’s resolution by our U.S. Congress, without the imbedded assumption of failure. Resolved: In the year 2026, The United States will withhold all military aid to the government of Israel in order to end United States’ complicity with Israel’s unjust and illegal actions against the Palestinian people.

It should be noted that this resolve concerns a response only to the political and military actions of the Israeli government. The resolution suggests no criticism or action against the Jewish faith or the Jewish community. It would not even jeopardize the existence of Israel. “In recent years, some U.S. and Israeli analysts have said that U.S. aid to Israel should be reevaluated because Israel is now a wealthy country —the fourteenth richest per capita—with one of the most advanced militaries in the world.” The resolution would only limit the United States from financially helping to facilitate Israel’s aggression against the Palestinian people. However, it could be a step toward justice for Palestinians and free the United States from a burdensome financial commitment to military aid for Israel. In addition, the saved money could contribute significantly toward health care for all people in the U.S. Now that would be a New Year’s Resolution that could shed traditional disappointment and assure success into the future.

Gun Violence Prevention Resources

The 56-page guide to assist you and your congregation.

CHRISTIAN EDUCATION

NH UCC Christian Educators Community of Practice

Next Zoom Gathering: Wednesday, January 14^th 7pm 

RSVP HERE!

All Christian Education staff, volunteers, and lovers are welcome to join us to connect, share, and support one another as we get back into the groove of youth groups, intergenerational happenings, and more in our places of worship! Together we'll build community, exchange ideas, and offer support to each other. 

Please share this information with the CE leader in your home church so we can loop them in! 

Questions? Email Tivvi Pare.

NHC CONFIRMATION PROGRAM

On December 14th, our Conference Confirmation group got together in person for the first time. We had a great time discussing the Christmas story and the Star of Bethlehem over lunch and then headed over to the planetarium at the McAuliffe-Shepherd Discovery Center to learn more about the stories of stars and journeys of hope and belief! 

Do you know a middle or high school youth who would like to join us as we build community, explore our faith, and have fun? Contact Tivvi for more information (email TPare@nhcucc.org). 

NOW HIRING

The New Hampshire Conference seeks candidates to serve as our Communications and Programs Coordinator. The Communications and Programs Coordinator provides logistical organization for Conference events and programs (including Annual Meeting and Prepared to Serve), maintains the Conference technology infrastructure, and publishes Conference communications including the Conference website and Weekly News. A position description is available upon request.

The Communications and Programs Coordinator position is a 30 hours a week, non-exempt position. Salary information available on request. Benefits (health and dental insurance, pension, etc.) are provided.

Interested candidates should submit a resume (with references to contact) to the Reverend Gordon Rankin, Conference Minister, at grankin@nhcucc.org.

The New Hampshire Conference is a Racial Justice, Just Peace, Open and Affirming Conference of the United Church of Christ.

Monday, January 26, 6:00 - 9:00pm ET, Boundary Training for Ministers in Specialized Settings with Rev. Tara Barber and Rev. Anissa Glaser-Bacon

This training, hosted by Revs. Tara Barber and Anissa Glaser-Bacon, is open to ministers serving in specialized settings throughout the United Church of Christ. Serving in specialized settings requires particular attention to boundaries within the ministry setting and home church that are challenging and different from those serving as local church pastors. This training will focus on matters that relate specifically to issues that these ministers face, providing opportunities for clergy to reflect on best practices and growth in their practice of ministry.

Thursday, March 12, 3:30 – 6:30pm ET, Boundary Awareness Training for Retired Ministers with Rev. Tara Barber and Rev. Melanie Oommen

Maintaining healthy boundaries is challenging at any stage in ministry and it is particularly tender and difficult attending to boundaries as we transition out of our last call, and while in retirement. "A Sure Foundation", "The Ministerial Code" and Rev. Dr. Bruce Epperly's new book, "The Jubilee Years" along with case studies, will provide the content of this training. Rev. Tara Barber and Rev. Melanie Oommen will offer this focused Boundary Awareness Training for those entering and living in retirement. Participants must be able to use zoom chat and breakout room functions and have their camera turned on throughout the training

January 11, 2026

As we consider the gifts of the magi, we are grateful to Mary Lou Kownacki, OSB, for her prayer of insight, on this Epiphany in this New Year.

“Prayer for Dialogue with Greater Religions”

I bow to the one who signs the cross.

I bow to the one who sits with the Buddha.

I bow to the one who wails at the wall.

I bow to the OM flowing in the Ganges.

I bow to the one who faces Mecca, whose forehead

touches holy ground.

I bow to dervishes whirling in mystical wind.

I bow to the north, to the south, to the east, to the west.

I bow to the God within each heart.

I bow to epiphany, to God’s face revealed.

I bow. I bow. I bow.



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