At The UCC Church House

In case you haven't noticed, the faith, spirituality, Church is in tremendous flux again. As Phyllis Tickle says, "every 500 years it seems the Church has a big rummage sale to see what to keep and what to get rid of." I just returned from a fascinating weekend at the UCC Church House in Cleveland, Ohio. Where the conversation was rampant, from the proclamations of the "Still Speaking God" to the Lutheran-UCC pastor sharing about bar room conversations about faith. While there I discovered the UCC is releasing a new song book with exciting new tunes from our present confusion amid re-worked standards. I was very proud of our UCC which has taken tremendous risks to be relevant and to seek a way in the wilderness of this post-reformation, post-modern, post-denominational world. I saw a church that was risking it's own life out of the conviction that God is doing something new. Unlike many churches these days, institutional preservation seems a foregone un-conclusion for the UCC. It is absolutely refreshing to experience a corporate church not acting like an institution based on power, wealth, and self preservation.

In one of the worship services that took place in the Armistad Chapel at UCC Church House we each were asked what we left when we came to the UCC. I immediately answered "isolation and a false sense of independence." Then asked what we gained, I responded, "A family that is willing to wrestle with the truth of who each of us is and can be." In recent weeks we have seen vandalism in Memphis upon the remarkable bill boards proclaiming our truth, our experience and our freedom. Justice comes with a price and the truth of God still speaking in you and me can not be halted by hatred and fear. So as we step further into the morrow of this social-religious flux, we know that God goes before us. Once again as we sing, "Behold, I make all things new" we can say we see it happening in our own time. The strength of our community and our willingness to speak our truth will buoy us through these stormy trials.