Central Atlantic Conference Annual Meeting Newark Delaware

The Central Atlantic Conference of the UCC Annual Meeting was held last weekend, June 10-12 at the conference center of the University of Delaware in Newark DE.  This is about a 2.5 hour drive from my house which I usually do alone.  This year I decided that it would be pushing my old Volvo to make the drive so I asked for a ride with Rev Chuck Rush was was going anyway because he is a member of the Board of Directors.  We left early and should have arrived on time but we ran into traffic in Princeton New Jersey because of detours.  There had been a storm the night before and maybe some trees were down.
Housing for this meeting is either in the dorm or in the Courtyard by Marriott.  I opted to stay in the hotel and this year I had a roommate.  She was the interim minister of Sojourners UCC Church in Charlottesville Va.  We decided to room together again next year.  The first night Friday we were so tired that we did not talk but we did the last day.  We both sang in the choir. Sojourners is a relatively new church that I visited when we had an Antiracism task force meeting there.  They were meeting in rented space.  They now have a building that they were able to purchase.

Since I got to the meeting early I relaxed over lunch before the formal meeting started at 4:00 PM. It was a group meeting entitled "How we woke up! Good News from the churches - What have we done to Energize our congregations"  This was the theme of the meeting.  Churches were invited to tell their stories.  LL DuBreuil who is minister of a church in Union NJ told us the story of how her church which was formed by the union of a German E & R church and a UCC Church became multicultural and multiracial.  There are a lot of African immigrants who attend her church and have taken over the meetings.  I told the story of "Let Justice Roll" that I wrote up for the UCC Synod.  Rusty Hick's ( a fromer Christ Church minister) church in Homedale  NJ had a interier face lift because a painters union picked their church to paint for free.  Every year they pick a church to help.  One of the members redesigned the church ceiling and they only had to pay for the painting of the design.  Mark Wakefield's (another former Christ Church minister)  church in Middletown MD burned last year.  They were able to get it renovated and put back to normal in one year with the exception of the organ which will be ready in October.
The next meeting for me was choir rehearsal followed by dinner.
The first Plenary Session was the beginning of the business of the session, including the introduction of Rev Geoffry Black, General Minister of the UCC.  We also have seven visitors from Germany including the new Bishop of the Lutheran Church. There was a worship service in which Rev Geoffry Black preached.  The evening ended with a traditional ice cream social.
Saturday consisted of workshops and Plenary  session followed by worship service and banquet.  Many of the attendees come just for Saturday since most of the business is done then and they have to go home to run the service in their churches. It would not be a meeting without a controversy since the business was only the budget and the ministers compensation, I wonders where the controversy would be.  It turned out that they amended the budget to include more money for Lancaster Theological College. The money was added due to an amendment of the budget after a lot of disscussion.
Sunday consisted of workshops and a final worship service which included communion.
I will include details about some of the sessions in my next blog.