A story from your Global Ministries JANUARY 2007

“Joseph rose and took the child and his mother by night, and departed to Egypt…”
M AT T H E W 2 : 1 4

The Way to Safety
I left Beirut on Sunday July 9th, 2006 to spend a week as
the representative of the U.S. and Global Ministries at the Forum
for Development, Culture and Dialogue annual International Work
and Study Camp in Mount Lebanon. There were nearly thirty
young adult participants representing Palestine, Jordan, Syria,
Egypt, Sudan, Lebanon, the U.S., Holland, Germany, and Denmark.
This diverse group was to work on breaking down stereotypes and
creating dialogue across culture and faith communities by sharing our own stories...
But we also witnessed the beginning of a war and were evacuated together.
On Wednesday, July 12th we were on a field visit when we learned of some bombing
at the border. At the time I didn’t think anything of it. On Thursday, July 13th we
continued on with our plan of visiting some mountain villages. Everyone had come
equipped with cell phones, and then the calls started pouring in.We decided to give
ourselves 30 minutes to go to our rooms, grab what we needed and rejoin the group.
It was hard to decide whether to stay in the safety of the mountains or try to evacuate.
Once it was decided that we would be leaving, the feeling of uncertainty vanished. But
IIt was hard to decide whether to stay in the safety of the mountains or try to evacuate.
Once it was decided that we would be leaving, the feeling of uncertainty vanished. But
I can’t explain the feeling and the actual physical pain I felt in saying goodbye to those
who would not be leaving with us. Life had changed for us all.
Saturday we traveled the smaller mountainous roads on a bus to the Syrian border.
There we saw the highway from Lebanon being bombed. Fortunately we passed through
the Lebanese border crossing quickly.We traveled through Syria to Jordan.We arrived
in Amman at last at 1 am. It had been a grueling and emotionally draining 12-hour trip.
I now know how beautiful Lebanon was. Even if I am able to go back to Beirut, it has all
been changed. So my memories are wonderful but full of sadness.
We pray for those who have no safe place to go.We ask for courage to make the choice to
work for change, and to keep believing there is enough hope and love to build a better world.
Before evacuation, Ruth Edens was a Global Mission Intern serving as program staff for
the Forum for Development, Culture and Dialogue (FDCD) based in Beirut, Lebanon.

RUTH EDENS
You make the difference . . .
The prayers and help you provide through your local congregations make
possible the work and witness of GLOBAL MINISTRIES, which is supported
by Disciples Mission Fund of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) and
Our Church’s Wider Mission (OCWM) of the United Church of Christ.
A story from your Global Ministries JANUARY
2007
GLOBAL MINISTRIES
W W W. G L O B A L M I N I S T R I E S . O R G
RUTH EDENS

No Child Left Behind Joint Organizational Statement for Reform

This message came to me from Janice Ressenger UCC Minister for Public Education:

Forum on Educational Accountability

For further information:

Monty Neill (FairTest) (617) 864-4810

Michael T. S. Wotorson (NAACP) (410) 580-5614

Jan Resseger (United Church of Christ) (216) 308-9611

Reggie Felton (School Boards) (703) 838-6722

Joel Packer (NEA) (202) 822-7329

For release Wednesday, January 3, 2007: 100 NATIONAL EDUCATION, CIVIL RIGHTS, RELIGIOUS & DISABILITY GROUPS CALL FOR OVERHAUL OF FEDERAL“NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND” LAW; URGE REPLACING FAILED TEST-SCORE SANCTIONS WITH SYSTEMATIC REFORMS TO IMPROVE SCHOOL QUALITY AND CLOSE ACHIEVEMENT GAPS

As the fifth anniversary of the “No Child Left Behind” law draws near, 100 national civil rights, education, disability advocacy, and religious groups have signed on to a “Joint Organizational Statement” calling for major changes in federal education legislation. The statement urges that “the law’s emphasis needs to shift from applying sanctions for failing to raise test scores to holding states and localities accountable for making the systemic changes that improve student achievement.” The number of organizations signing the statement has nearly quadrupled since it was launched in late 2004.

The Joint Statement outlines 14 recommended changes to NCLB including:

· Replace over-reliance on standardized tests with the use of multiple achievement measures in order to provide a more comprehensive picture of student and school performance;

· Supplant arbitrary proficiency targets with ambitious achievement targets based on rates of success actually achieved by the most effective public schools;

· Authorize interventions that enable schools to make changes that result in improved student achievement instead of sanctions that do not have a consistent record of success;

· Enhance the knowledge and skills teachers, administrators and families need to support high student achievement and improve state and district capacity to assist them;

· Increase NCLB funding to cover a substantial percentage of the costs that states and districts will incur to carry our these recommendations.

Among the 100 organizational signers are the Children’s Defense Fund, Council for Exceptional Children, League of United Latin American Citizens, Learning Disabilities Association, NAACP, National Center for Fair & Open Testing, National Council of Churches, National Education Association, National Parent-Teacher Association, National School Boards Association, National Urban League, People for the American Way, and United Church of Christ Justice and Witness Ministries.

Working together as the Forum on Education Accountability (FEA), many of the signers are crafting detailed proposals on professional teacher preparation and family involvement to implement the statement’s recommendations. In addition, the FEA has asked a panel of academic experts to review NCLB’s assessment and accountability provisions and propose changes to ensure that the federal education law has helpful rather than harmful educational consequences. The reports and detailed proposals will be released in the next several months.

NCLB was signed into law by President George W. Bush on January 8, 2002. It is scheduled for Congressional review and reauthorization in 2007.

The “Joint Organizational Statement” and a current list of its signers are online at the new Forum for Educational Accountability website, http://www.edaccountability.org

* * *

Jan Resseger, Minister for Public Education and Witness
United Church of Christ Justice and Witness Ministries
700 Prospect Avenue, Cleveland, OH 44115-1100
216-736-3711

Jeannette Brown

New Jersey Association Winter Meeting at Christ Church February 2, 3, & 4

Mark your calendars. The New Jersey Association United Church of Christ is taking over Christ Church February 2, 3 and 4th! I hope you will plan to be there for all or part of this program

Program

Featuring Cliff Aerie, Jan Aerie, Chris Bakriges, and the Oikos Ensemble

God speaks not just through the sounds we hear…but through events in all their complexity and variety, through the harmonies and disharmonies and counterpoint of all that happens. Frederick Buechner

Agenda

Friday 7:30 PM An evening of World Music, Jazz, Storeytelling, and Multi-media imagery with the Oikos Ensemble as the Guide for the Journey that awaits the People of God

Saturday 9:00 AM – 3:30 PM A Map & Tools for the Journey Five Flats or Seven Sharps: Hints for the ministry journey of your congregation for UCC’s next 50 years. Be involved in dialogue, Q & A and Playshop Sessions. Lunch is included Cost for the day is $10.00 a person

Sunday 9:30 AM Cliff will participate in the service of worship

Register through the Association office by January 22nd, 2007
By e-mail: njassociation@email.com
or phone: 973-748-7772

See the flyer posted on the UCC bulletin board

Jeannette Brown

Martin Luther King Jr. Day Music

The Choir is going to sing "Wayfaring Stranger" on Sunday January 14 MLK Sunday. Since I was curious about the origins of this spiritual I searched the internet and found the following analysis. You will note the the definitive study of the music was done by a professor of chemistry at the University of Georgia. Chemists are diverse people with diverse hobbies.

Wayfaring Stranger

Wayfaring Stranger was born in the southern Appalachian Mountains about the time of the American Revolution, according to widely held beliefs about the origins of this popular, early American song. At that time, the immigrants of the region were mostly English, Scottish, Irish, and Welsh, but there was also a mysterious group known as Melungeons. Sometimes called the Black Dutch, the Melungeons are often said to be of Portuguese descent, though their precise lineage is still a mystery, varies much, and is a complex mixture thought to include Native American, African (including Bantu), and some Mediterranean, with Turkish as a favorite. In recent years much research has begun to yield more clues to the Melungeons' origins and history. They appear to have been semi-nomadic, generally moving inward from the Atlantic coast in search of more favorable social conditions. Probably because of this, Wayfaring Stranger has become associated with Melungeon history.

Regardless of descent, in those days the people of the region lived lives of enormous hardships, struggling to survive in an environment of often-rugged wilderness terrain, few supplies, not always friendly Indians, and the frequent loneliness of isolation. Wayfaring Stranger is typical of many of the spiritual songs of the time, expressing the pain and hardship of daily life, while dreaming and hoping for a bright and beautiful life after death.

As many of these settlers moved westward in the expansion during the years following the American Revolution, Wayfaring Stranger, one of the favorite songs of the day, traveled with them, eventually becoming widely known all across North America. More recently, in the middle of the twentieth century, Wayfaring Stranger was revived by the American folk music movement and by musical researchers and performers such as Pete Seeger and Burl Ives. It was Burl Ives who popularized many early American songs, including Wayfaring Stranger. Known as Wayfaring Stranger, Poor Wayfaring Stranger, or I Am a Poor Wayfaring Stranger, the song is described variously as: spiritual, American spiritual, folk-spiritual, Negro spiritual, traditional Southern spiritual, Southern folk-hymn, spiritual folk-ballad, religious ballad, hymn, etc. There is some evidence that supports a black American spiritual source for Wayfaring Stranger, and surely the song's history is not complete without the significant influences of the black spiritual tradition. I think that David Warren Steel of the University of Mississippi describes well the intermingled transformation and development of many spirituals when he writes in the Journal of Musicological Research 5 (November 1984), pp. 260-264, "The spiritual song tradition is neither white nor black, neither northern or southern, but American." I understand this to mean that, whatever their often hard to trace initial origins, spirituals were quickly adopted and adapted by the diverse people and traditions of America. And so it continues today.

Like most early American songs, there were hundreds or even thousands of variations of Wayfaring Stranger. In my quest to learn about Wayfaring Stranger, I communicated with University of Georgia Professor Emeritus of Chemistry and published music researcher John F. Garst, who has extensively studied the song's history. His article, "Poor Wayfaring Stranger" ­ Early Publications," was published in 1980 in the journal, The Hymn (31 (2): 97­101). Having examined hundreds of early versions of Wayfaring Stranger, he mentions that the song has an oral history that probably dates back to the 1780s. He then goes on to describe its history in hymnals from the mid-1800s into the early 20th Century. I am grateful to Professor Garst for sending me, from his private research collection, several examples of early versions of Wayfaring Stranger. Even among these samples, there are so many variations of melody, harmony, lyrics, and even titles. Still, I feel that the song's essence remains intact in every version.

Wayfaring Stranger is a tremendously popular, universal, and timeless song that still strikes a deep, resonant chord within us today, just as it has for over two centuries.

STEVE ROUSE

I know it as Burl Ives' theme song for his radio program. Remember radio, it was TV without pictures!

Jeannette Brown

Fixing "No Child Left Behind"

I received the following e-mail from Janice Ressenger UCC minister for pulic education. It is about the preparation for the reauthorization of the "No Child Left Behind" act. I hope that some of you will be able to attend this meeting in the Washington DC area or if not take action by writing your Congressman and Senators to express your feelings as to how this act is affecting the education of your children.

CHECK OUT THIS EXCITING MARCH 9 EVENT to prepare justice the No Child Left Behind Reauthorization Debate!

The National Council of Churches Committee on Public Education and Literacy has planned a wonderful event to proceed Ecumenical Advocacy Days: FIXING No Child Left Behind. The event will happen in Washington, DC on Friday, March 9, from 10:00 AM until 4:30 PM. Actual site is the DoubleTree Crystal City in Arlington, VA --- the Ecumenical Advocacy Days hotel site.

For an event flyer and/or to register, go to: http://www.ucctakeaction.org/site/c.9eIBJKNoHlE/b.1539025/k.A2FA/Public_Education.htm . Scholarships up to $200 are being offered (according to need) to help defray expenses of participants (see event flyer).

You will find top speakers including policy advocates and public school teachers and administrators, and you will have the opportunity to strategize with others about witnessing for justice during the Congressional debate this year as NCLB comes up for reauthorization.

While this event precedes Ecumenical Advocacy Days (http://www.advocacydays.org/) and while it is being sponsored by the National Council of Churches, you are welcome as a person of any faith or of no faith.

This is one more effort of the NCC Committee on Public Education and Literacy to educate and empower faith based public education advocates, following the earlier efforts of the committee on this issue:
Ten Moral Concerns in the Implementation of NCLB: http://www.ncccusa.org/pdfs/LeftBehind.pdf
Questions for Senators and Congressional Representatives: http://www.ncccusa.org/pdfs/questionsaboutnochildbehind.pdf
NCLB Congressional Letter-Writing Campaign: http://www.faithfulamerica.org/article.php?id=91
Joint Organizational Statement on NCLB: http://www.ucc.org/justice/education/nclbjoint.pdf
We hope you'll attend FIXING No Child Left Behind on March 9. If you can't, please help us spread the word.

--Jan


Jan Resseger, Minister for Public Education and Witness
United Church of Christ Justice and Witness Ministries
700 Prospect Avenue, Cleveland, OH 44115-1100
216-736-3711

The flyer for this event will be posted on the UCC bulletin board and on Christ Church website.
Jeannette Brown