Hancock UCC Weekly Messenger for October 27, 2024
Time, like an ever-rolling stream
bears all its sons away;
they fly forgotten, as a dream
dies at the op’ning day.
Pastor TJ will be in Wisconsin until October 31st. Her time there will be split 50% vacation and 50% work. Our service will be led by our student ministry intern, Sarina Brooks, this Sunday.
All are invited to join a meditation group at 9:00 a.m. on Fridays in our Sanctuary. In the spirit of the sessions led by Angela Absher at the Hancock Point Chapel we will begin with a lightly guided non-denominational meditation followed by a few minutes of discussion and ending with another 20 minutes of meditation. The program will be led by novices Alison Boden and TJ Mack. Now and again we may have guest speakers. Our goal is friendship and happiness. No experience is necessary. We leave in silence. Do come…
The Sunrise Association Fall Meeting will be held November 2nd - 8:30 am in Monroe.
The Union Congregational Church of Hancock, United Church of Christ will conduct its 2024 Annual Church Meeting on November 10th, 2024, immediately following the 10:00 AM Worship Service for the following purposes:
1. To Elect Church Officers, Board and Committee members;
2. To receive Board and Committee Reports;
3. To vote on the Proposed 2025 Church Budget
4. And to hear any other business to come before the congregation.
Jeanne Edwards, Clerk
October 27, 2024
We need a quorum of 25 voting members to conduct business. Please plan to attend!
Our meetings are open to all. If you would like to attend a meeting, please let TJ or Vicky know and they will provide the Zoom link, or you are welcome to attend in person.
The Board of Deacons will meet Friday, November 8th at 3:00 pm in person and on Zoom
Church Council will meet Friday, November 15th at 11:30 am in person and on Zoom
The “Claiming Your Call for a Climate-Changed World” team – Amelia Ashmore, Alison Boden, Nick Davis, Pat Summerer and Pastor TJ invite you into a congregational conversation on Sunday Nov. 17th after our worship service. Help us to discern our “small project with radical intent.” Thank you in advance for your participation.
Information about the journey these five have begun on behalf of our church can be found at https://thebtscenter.org/claiming-your-call-for-a-climate-changed-world/
In preparation for the post-service meeting on November 17 regarding opportunities for the church to respond to climate change, members who attended a BTS Center program in June on this subject are providing brief reflections for the next few weeks. The first one, below, is from Alison Boden.
I’m so grateful that I got a chance to be part of our church’s team at the Claiming Your Call conference. I feel like a real beginner when it comes to climate activism in general, but even more so to thinking theologically about the environment and particularly about the climate crisis. I’d heard enough before the conference to say that the whole of creation -- earth and heaven, the whole cosmos -- are God’s holy work and thus require our care, our stewardship. I’d also read enough to know that the concept of stewardship is problematic to many in terms of Christian theology and biblical interpretation. Stewardship suggests a kind of proprietorship, maybe not ownership (God is the owner), but an assigned responsibility as a superior, an overseer, over the environment. We humans are, in many interpretations of Genesis 1, put in charge of the environment, given control, and encouraged to use the environment for our own needs as we see fit. This attitude, say some Christian writers like Lynn White, have gotten us into the predicament in which we now find ourselves. It is human action that is causing our climate crisis, and that’s because we’ve been using the natural world to enrich us, to supply whatever we want for ourselves, to power us. We have been stewards indeed -- and bad ones.
The conference got me thinking about the Book of Genesis, and the statement that human beings are unique in being made in the image of God. That uniqueness has been interpreted by many as our superiority to the rest of creation. And THAT got me thinking about what it is that makes humans inhabit the image of God. Is it our noses? Did we get God’s, along with Grandma’s? Is it our ability to reason? I’ve watched my cat think through his choices. Is it that we have a conscience, or compassion? Other animals care for the orphans in their midst. Is it that we love? Some months ago the newspapers were describing a whale who carried her dead infant with her for hundreds of miles. Is it that we know God? I’m not ready to say that the rest of creation doesn’t, in its own way, understand their creator. If anything I find myself thinking that human beings are unique, and thus share the image of God, because we, alone in creation, have the power to destroy all that God has made – on earth, anyway. I came away from the conference thinking that religious communities have a central role, maybe THE crucial role, to play in the climate crisis, because it is a spiritual transformation that is necessary in how we humans relate to the rest of creation, and whether we preserve or destroy it.
From our Student Ministry Intern, Sarina Brooks:
Peace and Prayer Vigils
Union Congregational Church of Hancock, in solidarity with other local UCC churches, will be holding peace and prayer vigils during the months of October and November. Come, bring yourself, whoever you are, however you are feeling. Bring your worries, anxieties, hopes, and prayers for peace. This will be a time of quiet; for prayers, meditation, reflection or any other ways you seek to use this time and space. We will have printed prayers you may take; candles you can light for your prayers, and quiet music for reflection. Come and stay, for a minute or the entire hour. All are welcome. Please extend the invitation to others that you know. We will offer the following times in which our sanctuary will be open:
Monday November 4th @ 1-2PM
Monday November 18th @ 1-2PM
Sarina’s home church is also offering Peace and Prayer Vigils
Centre Street Congregational Church Machias
Monday October 28th @ 12-1PM and 6:30-7:30PM
Tuesday November 5th @ 12-1PM and 6:30-7:30PM
Monday November 25th @ 12-1PM and 6:30-7:30PM
Upcoming Birthdays and Anniversaries
October 29: Ron McGlinchey 30: Chris & Melissa Nowell
November 01: Ted Atkinson 03: Mike Summerer
14: Johanna Bazzolo 16: Marcia Nowell 16: Erin Shaw
17: Cookie Thelen 20: Kathy McGlinchey 24: Jimmy & Liz Awalt
26: Clint Ritchie 30: Arthur Ashmore
Help Keep Grammar School Kids Healthy and Focused - Bring your returnable beverage cans and bottles to the church and support our campaign to provide snacks for students at the Hancock Grammar School. It's an easy and painless way to collect lots of nickels which will add up to a meaningful contribution for the snack program and help the kids stay focused, healthy and thriving. Call David Wildes at 422-3739 with any questions. He can also pick up your bottles and cans upon request.
Please keep the following people in your prayers this week:
Prayers for Ron’s brother, Joe; Kathy’s brother, David; both receiving radiation or chemotherapy treatments for cancer. Prayers for Donald B. and Kenny V. and Orrick of Golden Acres. Prayers for Sarina’s dad, James Brookman; Xyerra; Everett’s sister Libby; Judith C.; Don and Heather; Bruce’s sister Lynn; Sally’s friend, Sue Barger; Dr. John; Yvonne; Herbie Lounder; Ira; Cathy C.; Jane; Ruth; Marie; Doris; Ron & Kathy; Jim Snyder; Jonathan Holmes; Brandon Perry-Hudson; John Wood; Sue Davies; Sue Davenport; Liz & Jim; Kenny Stratton; Joy & David & Lori & Melissa; Debbie & Lincoln & son-in-law Aaron, daughter Ashley, and granddaughter Brielle; Sandy Phippen; Betty & her step-daughter Mollie; Debbie & Hollis & Holly and Debbie’s Aunt Linda Reed; Amy Nickerson; Tom & Judy’s son Andrew & family; Kevin and Vanessa & family. Prayers of strength and healing for all awaiting diagnoses and for all recovering from surgeries & procedures. Prayers for all that are unsafe, unhoused, hungry & in need of care & compassion. Prayers for all caregivers; and prayers for all that is in your heart…
For those joining our Sunday Worship 10:00 service via Zoom, here is the link.
Join Zoom Meeting
Meeting ID: 822 2425 2518 Passcode: 755650
From the Maine Conference
Provoking Theological Conversation among Christians
by Malcolm Himschoot, MESOM Dean
Within the United Church of Christ, our theological conversation goes back hundreds and thousands of years, as captured most recently in a Maine School of Ministry survey in the spring of 2024. Highlights from the survey show passionate interest in God’s love for the earth and enduring concern for individuals’ spiritual journey in the legacy of Jesus. Results also showed a wide range of recommended thought partners, from those beyond Christian tradition to those reclaiming ancient creeds and sacraments. Participants who took the online survey were exposed to an outline of Christian theological topics and asked to supply one recommended book or author for each. With the idea that faith leaders love their bookshelves, through this survey MESOM was conducting a listening exercise to hear the influences that are fashioning us as a body of faith today.
Meanwhile, at our conference’s recent annual meeting one guest workshop by Rev. Jodi Hayashida exposed a troubling public conversation resembling the UCC conversation very little. In this broader public context, faithful bodies like the UCC have to work hard to stand out and apart from narratives of Christian white nationalism. The latter discourse is not specifically theological, but political – a movement toward unaccountable power that will co-opt any theological symbols convenient for its purpose. How does faithfully following Jesus, who said in Mark 10:45, “I have come not to be served but to serve” translate to xenophobia, racial supremacy, narratives of domination, state control over women’s bodies, and paternalistic authority via kingship – instead of cultural humility, Pentecost-inspired diversity, love of neighbor, empowerment of individuals, and the values of participatory democracy? Such a wide detour leads not through discernment and reflection and relationship with Christ, but has everything to do with human motivations toward greed and profit and manipulation.
Part of the church’s theological work in these times is to vocally and visibly oppose exclusionary and subjugationist paradigms. Such paradigms are the work of well-funded thinktanks and organized groups such as those invested in Project 2025. Although seeming to present a religious appeal to traditional values and genders, times that were simpler, and goods that were shared instead of commodified and controlled by the elite, this political agenda results in deporting family members, demonizing dissenters, de-regulating the worst abuses of the private sector, and derailing the protections of government-by-the-people. It leaves aside material aspects of feeding and clothing, decency and regard, and other essentials of the common good that make for spiritual living. In terms of theological content with respect to Jesus, grace, God in creation, God in the Trinity, sacrament in the church, eschatology and purpose, human authenticity and calling, and life-changing responsiveness to God, such supposed Christian documents are null and void.
In MESOM’s specific poll of UCC faith leaders in Maine, which reached a dozen respondents from among those trained theologically between 1972-2016, several authors on the list spoke to the problems of white nationalism and ideologies of racial supremacy. Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote on this topic in the 1930s. James Cone rang the bell in the 1970s, and Vine Deloria in the 1980s. At the turn of the millennium, Dorothy Soelle in Germany continued to advance critical consciousness around the influences that comingle and compete with the liberating message of Jesus. Astute theological influences in the US are needed today. As long as someone can profit from scapegoating made-up categories of “immigrants and criminals,” political campaigns will be run and calculations made based on dog-whistling for white supremacy – a tactic loosely veiled as conservatism, and liberally doctored to resemble Christianity.
To listen and attend to the true health of Christian theological conversation is part of our purpose in conducting theological education for the life of the church. With evidence that UCC foundations are not aligned with Christian white nationalism, yet acknowledging rising religious support for authoritarianism in the public sphere, it is important to think, pray, act, and serve to make a difference. What the next generations receive from those of us alive today will either be mute complicity in a recurring distortion of Christianity away from the legacy of Jesus and God’s love for the earth, or a humble, courageous, and self-giving challenge to all powers that steal and kill and destroy.
Annual Meeting in Pictures
The 2024 Annual Meeting of the Maine Conference United Church of Christ took place at Pilgrim Lodge in West Gardner October 18th and 19th. To see the highlights, please follow this link: https://photos.app.goo.gl/HXoK2Fgb25MNGn7p8
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