NEW PHONE NUMBER 517-258-0038 | To care for UCC clergy and churches in Michigan.
NEW PHONE NUMBER 517-258-0038 | To care for UCC clergy and churches in Michigan.
Church News You Can Use
On this Juneteenth holiday, we remember that on June 19, 1865, enslaved people in Galveston, Texas, finally learned they were free, more than two years after the Emancipation Proclamation was issued by President Lincoln 30 months earlier. It is a reminder that justice moves too slowly and that this nation’s justice work on race is far from done. Last Fall, our staff and members of our board of directors entered into a six week program of study together, Animating Antiracism, which, speaking for myself, was also a reminder that my own work on race is far from done.
So I am grateful for the holiday of Juneteenth which gives me a chance to stop, reflect and be inspired by the stories of Black heroes from history, like the ones in this new UCC resource, Juneteenth: Celebrating Intergenerational Movement-Making toward Solidarity.
The theme ties in with our own new Michigan Conference Mitten Project in which we recognize how important it is to share the justice work of faith formation across the ages, and through the voices of people of all ages, because you never know who the Holy Spirit will speak through next!
Jun 03, 2025
June 2025 Monthly Newsletter for the Michigan Conference UCC
Hello Dear Colleagues,
Do you feel it? Do you feel the seismic shifts happening around our world? As Abby Maxman, President and CEO of Oxfam America says in her television ads, “I know it feels like the world is on fire.” Are you feeling the shocks and shifts right under your feet? How prepared do you feel to respond? Is your church seeing a way forward? Or maybe just surviving one day at a time? How will we ever get through this?
The 2025 Annual Meeting will be addressing key themes around thriving and not just surviving as we look at how to do justice, how to stand for our values, and how our churches can respond in new and creative ways to manage these turbulent times. The Annual Meeting of the Michigan Conference United Church of Christ will be held on Friday and Saturday, October 3 and 4, 2025 with a theme of “A Justice Seeking Conference.” It will be held at the Westin in Southfield.
The Annual Meeting will kick off on Friday morning by offering an optional visit to the Detroit Historical Museum. After lunch, workshops will be available with some interesting topics in the works. Financial options the Conference offers, how to develop older adult ministries, justice topics, and more. Saturday will include hearings for resolutions, worship with conference minister Rev. Dr. Lillian Daniel, and a session with keynote speaker, Rev. Dr. Wendell Anthony.
Like last year, our days together will be full and will include vendor tables, childcare, and time for relaxation and fun. Registration is open NOW. Be sure to note the early bird rate.
Rooms will be available for those staying overnight with a discounted rate for reservations made before September 5, 2025.
We hope you’ll join us. Learning opportunities await, as well as times of connecting and inspiring one another, and multiple venues to acknowledge our covenant that makes us stronger together. Ultimately, the information and energy shared will help us grasp the power of God within our communities to drive change, even in the face of uncertainty, injustice, and conflict.
We are sure you will be encouraged, enlivened, and strengthened for the challenging journey of ministry that lies ahead.
“Some trust in chariots, some trust in horses, but we trust in the Lord our God.”
(Psalm 20:7)
See you in October!
Blessings,
Rev. Dr. Diane Baker Antionette McGarvin
Moderator Secretary, Board of Directors
Michigan Conference UCC Michigan Conference UCC
Apr 01, 2025
April 2025 Monthly Newsletter for the Michigan Conference UCC
Mar 04, 2025
March 2025 Monthly Newsletter for the Michigan Conference UCC
Contentious times require more love. In my last pastoral letter to you, I talked about the ways in which the gospel rubs like sandpaper against the ways of the world. Today, I want to talk about the love that lies underneath that resistance.
Last week in the news, you may have seen that 27 religious groups are suing the Department of Homeland Security over the recent reversal of the “sensitive locations” policy, which previously restricted ICE immigration raids and arrests at houses of worship. I was personally disappointed that our national setting decided not to join the list of plaintiffs that included the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), Episcopalian and African Methodist Episcopal Zion denominations, but we can disagree and still love and care for each other, in covenant partnership where the conversation continues. Part of love is seeking to understand. I can only imagine how difficult that discernment decision, described here, must have been.
Love is Louder: Love Your Neighbor Out Loud is a UCC national initiative that I am genuinely excited about because it includes a practical toolkit for churches who want to widen their welcome to the transgender community, which finds itself under so many attacks these days. The beautiful Love is Louder language covers that and so much more.
There is the eternal and theological truth that God’s love is greater and more powerful than everything else, but there’s also the practical reality that If we want people to know that deep truth, we have to say it out loud. When was the last time you spoke out loud to someone outside the church about the power of God’s love? And when you speak to one another within the church, is love the loudest emotion a stranger walking by would hear?
I believe our churches are well placed to share the word to the world that love is louder than hate, but friends, we control the volume knob by both our voices and by our behavior. Take me for example, as your very human Conference Minister, whose role includes receiving the anxiety and criticism of the body when it is in pain. When I disagree or feel wounded myself, if my judgmentalism drowns out my love, I am just a noisy gong and a clanging cymbal. But when love is louder, the conversation continues, covenantally, even amidst disagreement. So I write this pastoral letter to myself as much as I write it to you. Contentious times call for greater love. Pump up the volume.
Peace and Blessings,
Lillian Daniel
Michigan Conference Minister
Feb 04, 2025
February 2025 Monthly Newsletter for the Michigan Conference UCC
This has been an intense January and it is not over yet. From the shifting of political power in this inflamed nation, burning houses in California, freezing roads in Michigan, to the fears of God’s precious children who see their immigration status threatened, their genders mocked, their economic lives ignored. In the midst of it all, we still stop to remember the Christian witness of Martin Luther King Jr, his timeless words and also his sacrifice, in systems of evil where words were as easily weaponized back then as they are today.
At times like this I go deeper with God, resisting my own temptation to ask for a few new words with which to speak my own truth to the people who already agree with me. Instead I dare to ask what gift the Church has to bring, as imperfect as we are and as imperfect as we have always been.
Earlier in January, as the cruel California fires were burning, I was in freezing cold Chicago teaching a weeklong January intensive course on the History, Polity and Theology of the United Church Christ at Chicago Theological Seminary. Nowadays, almost all teaching at CTS happens online. Our class was the exception to the rule, meeting in person, in a classroom, all day for five days. For my enrolled students, whose street addresses ranged from East Coast Massachusetts to West Coast Washington, that week was their first time “on campus,” their first time inside the beautiful building that was imaginatively designed for a future hybrid learning world that was about to come sooner than the architects predicted when the 2011 cornerstone was laid, in a pandemic we didn’t see coming.
Jan 17, 2025
SENDING THOUGHTS, PRAYERS, AND REVENGE FANTASIES
by Lillian Daniel, Michigan Conference Minister
I’ve been praying for California in the aftermath of the fires, all while wanting to do so much more than pray. So I watch the news in order to understand the science more, in the hope that some nugget of knowledge will prevent this disaster from happening again, or at least give me someone to blame it on, as if some final judgement from me in Michigan will bring care and closure to California. If you’ve ever tried this particular self-soothing tactic, you know that it makes nothing better.
So now I’m going to start preaching to myself by saying that I hope you can also experience the comfort of knowing that in the United Church of Christ covenant, by sharing your church budget through the Michigan Conference to Basic Support, your dollars are already there on the other side of the country, meeting practical needs and showing Christ’s love, through the national church that holds those gifts and is ready to share those gifts on the ground when needed.
As a Conference Minister in Michigan, I am in touch with my Conference Minister colleagues around the country about what they need when disaster strikes, and what they do not need. What they do not need are a million requests from a million missions committees via email inquiring about how to donate to a very specific thing someone saw in the news, with a long list of questions and caveats about how exactly the funds will and will not be spent, with so many strings attached they feel like tug ropes to the little boat that’s already sinking.
Jan 07, 2025
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