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
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
Nov 22, 2024
To any pastors or church members struggling to love each other in a politically diverse church, I want to tell you that this may be the most important ministry you ever do. God is still speaking and you never know who God will speak through next.
After the election, I hosted a reflection for our pastors and church members. There wasn’t much shock about the results—after all, we live in Michigan, where the country’s division is our local reality, embedded in our towns and within our churches. But there were a few pastors feeling surprised, scared, and rewriting their sermons for that Sunday.
My heart went out to them because they reminded me of myself, back in 2016, as a pastor who had recently moved to Dubuque, Iowa, from Illinois and was also truly shocked at those 2016 election results. Little did I know that, in the weeks that followed, I would discover my new Iowa congregation was much more politically diverse than I’d imagined. My carefully planned 2016 post-election sermon, as well as my long-scheduled, pastorally sensitive “drop-in” hours the day after the election, were all based on the idea that I would be comforting Republicans—not the other way around!
I had nothing to give at that post-election drop-in other than some soggy donuts (I’d probably been crying over them in the car) and the deeper struggle within myself: if I could have been so wrong about predicting the election results in Iowa and about understanding the deeply held views of my church members, was I equally wrong about my call from God to serve there? I think I basically told them all that in my sermon that week, which may have been way too much information for some church members who told me “We really didn’t want to hear who you voted for, Pastor!” There were a few lonely moments that winter of 2016 when I thought about packing my bags, but I’m so glad I didn’t. That purple congregation in the swing state of Iowa ended up being my sweetheart church. Pastors, you know what I’m talking about.
Eight years later, I’m now living in my second swing state and I am so grateful to be your Michigan Conference Minister, a pastor to pastors, responsible for the care of our congregations. I came here with my eyes open, thanks to a plain-spoken search committee who helped me to understand that despite a national news cycle full of unavoidable stories about Michigan militias and pandemic pandemonium, this complicated and diverse swing state is a very special place to be.
So after this recent election, I don’t feel shocked and therefore perhaps not as much pain or disappointment as others do in the United Church of Christ family. I am blessed to be here for such a time as this.
Nov 05, 2024
Nov 05, 2024
November 2024 Monthly Newsletter for the Michigan Conference UCC
This past weekend at our wonderful and well-attended Michigan Conference Annual Meeting, the General Minister and President of our denomination, Rev. Dr. Karen Georgia Thompson, shared her aspiration for the United Church of Christ to continue to celebrate being a “big tent” with room for a variety of opinions, theological and political. Little did she know that our diversity here in the Michigan Conference extends to some very unusual costumes, which were on hilarious display the night before, as we laughed our way through Halloween, worshipped our way into All Saints Day and now find ourselves here on Election Day.
Annual Meeting Highlights and an invitation to Election Reflection Leadership Lunch.
Oct 01, 2024
October 2024 Monthly Newsletter for the Michigan Conference UCC
More Annual Meeting Details (Online Registration ends 10.14.24)
and ‘spooktacular’ Fall Events and Resources (including Advent prep…)
Share the link with your local churches and leaders
and join us for a fantastic Fall in the Michigan Conference 
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