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“Before the pandemic, we had thirteen people in the choir,” the pastor tells me, while the moderator explains that it was a three octave bell choir made up of both adults, who all saw eye to eye, and youth, who never missed a rehearsal. But that’s nothing compared to the same choir as described by the church historian who adds that there was also a vocal choir whose large tenor section all had masters degrees in musical performance, perfect pitch and halos, because it wasn’t actually a human choir but an elite ensemble of harp playing angels.

Nostalgia is an unreliable narrator. The more time that passes between now and the glory days, the better that old church choir sounds. Same goes for the couples clubs who met for monthly dinners, the booming youth group, or the last live worship service before the shut down in 2020, that seemed so ordinary and lightly attended at the time but now gets bigger and better in the rear view mirror.

Over the last nine months, I’ve worshiped and preached at 45 church services in the Michigan Conference and in a spirit of humility, I do have a few observations. I recognize that year three of whatever we are going through feels harder than year one or two. For this reason, I am leading a clergy retreat with serious scholarships (use code MI 1/2) and we are holding a workshop on trauma for our leaders.  Read More

After the Shooting at Michigan State University

This Valentines Day, I do not send our 140 Michigan churches the sugary sentiments of a heart shaped box of chocolates but the prayers from my broken human heart after last night’s shooting at Michigan State University. We had church members who could see the scene from where they were locked down in homes and churches. Last night, as I checked in on our local pastors, I knew they were checking in on their churches, communities, families, workers, students, first responders and the weary world around them.

For, as every pastor knows, when tragedy hits, our churches grow much larger than the membership rolls. Churches become centers of care for the whole community, in buildings at busy intersections, in online gatherings, or on prayer chains. When violence locks us down or sends us into the streets, the church has the chance to blast past its walls, when preachers realize that their most important sermon may be the one that is offered to the stranger at the grocery store who recognizes them and says, “Pastor, just answer me this. How can God let this happen?”

I’ve heard that question a lot lately, from people horrified by whatever picture of the world they receive in the news of their own choosing, but it’s a question that we in the church have an ancient answer to. God does not let this happen. People do. It is people who let these things happen.

We saw it in the video of Tyre Nichols, killed by the brutality of human violence and the more devastating brutality of human indifference. We see it in the horror of the war in Ukraine, where, as in all wars, the poor pay the greatest price, while far away leaders philosophize to monetize their own safety. We see it in ourselves as a country, when the news of one school shooting after another becomes routine, in a culture drooling for violence as entertainment, but hardened to it in real life. We see it in ourselves as a nation of immature impulses and short attention spans, more interested in shooting balloons out of the sky than taking guns out of the hands of its own people. God does not allow that to happen. People do.

Yet somehow, despite the stakes, God, the great creator of all things, chose to create us with free will and mortal bodies. We could have been made to live forever as coddled infants, with our needs met, our decisions constrained and our capacity to harm the rest of creation minimized. Instead, we were created in the image of God, which means we have souls and bodies that were literally built for growth and change. Created with a limited time on earth, we were given the ability to choose between right and wrong, love or death, God or stuff, the care of all creation or the tedious worship of the self, all on a short journey through life whose purpose is to draw us closer to the one who gave us life to begin with.

As for the shooting in East Lansing, God does not let this happen. People do. It is God’s people who let the worst things happen to ourselves and to one another, from the violent act of taking lives, to the violent inaction of cynical indifference. But it is also God’s people who allow the most beautiful things to happen, from the courageous saving of lives, to the loving healing of broken spirits, to the humble repairing of the world from our own mistakes. This is what it means to follow Jesus, human and divine. Today, our Michigan pastors and churches are at the beating heart of it all.

Peace and Blessings,
The Rev. Dr. Lillian Daniel

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This January, I taught the History, Theology and Polity of United Church of Christ Polity to seminarians at Chicago Theological Seminary. When I say “at,” I use the term loosely. The class, originally planned as an intensive week in person in Hyde Park, switched to online, so my students were zooming in from Texas to Rhode Island. Their religious backgrounds also spanned a distance and yet they had all been led by the Holy Spirit to take this class as part of their discernment if they are called to preach, teach and lead our people. We had people raised Southern Baptist, Wesleyan, Roman Catholic, Nondenominational, or without much religion at all, each of them bringing the gifts and the struggles of their past spiritual lives into their new home under the big tent we call the United Church of Christ. You get the picture. My students were as big a bunch of “mutts” as the average UCC congregation in the Michigan Conference.  Read More