things I like about the United Church of Christ/UCC #1

I decided to start writing about those things that I like about the United Church of Christ also known as the UCC, a Christian denomination out of the Reformed tradition of the Protestant church.

#1 was easy - Northland College in Ashland, WI.

This is a UCC related college. I got to know of it while we lived in the far northwoods of Wisconsin when I served Community UCC in St. Germain, WI in the early 1990's. I have continued to support Northland financially ever since (more than my alma maters of Hanover College and Eden Theological Seminary). And last year at the college fair at Firestone High School I offered to represent Northland and did so.

Northland is consistent with what it says it is...their ethos is clearly respect for the God's creation. The school has an ethic of earth stewardship. Of any college info magazine I have gotten, Northland's I continually look forward to. I dream and am so hopeful every time I read it.

I wish the UCC relied on Northland more and lifted it up. I think in the present when the UCC is living a lot off of its storied prophetic past, Northland is one of the most consistent settings in the present of creating a prophetic future!

United Church of Christ headlines

I get news headlines and blog headlines related to a variety of topics. One of those is "United Church of Christ." The variety under that title is interesting. I get a lot of obits from churches in Wisconsin...doesn't seem that UCC churches in other states or funeral services are that newsworthy. A lot of bazaars and swiss steak dinner announcements from all over. A lot of blog entries on Barak Obama and gay & lesbian folks in the UCC.

Now that's just a quick recollection from over a year of getting these daily notices. I wonder what the techno archaeologists in the future will discern from these.

self righteous compost

I'm feeling real self-righteous today. While all my neighbors raked and blew their leaves out to the curb for the city to pick up, I mulched and piled all mine with grass clippings in my own compost pile. I can hardly wait until spring to use this large compost I have started in my beds and yard.

The city will take the leaves to our municipal compost plant and sell back to us our leaves. I'm glad they do that instead of just dumping them. But I just feel so right about doing my own compost pile. I've heard in some setting though that these piles don't comply with zoning and folks have had to remove them.

I'd love to see a neighborhood full of compost piles! Something about redeeming the waste...sounds God like to me.

why?

I find myself asking "why" a lot lately. As I move closer to the presumed retirement age, I find myself doing church and to some degree ministry in a way that fits what is available. At the same time I keep anticipating retirement not as a time to get out, but as the freedom to do ministry as I am discerning it to be called by God in this time. And mainly freed from the limiting institutional constraints that use a rhetoric of change and service, and yet are so geared to the status quo and serving the institution first as it is and has been.

The category of liberal no longer feels focused on "progressive" or changing. I find as much these days of flux and change in so called conservative circles as I do in liberal circles. And each attacks the other, often demonizing the other with stories of god awful actions. I am tired of these naval gazing debates!

What is the new thing that God is doing? New wine skins. New life. Can an aging 59'er reach beyond the limits of the world as he has known it?

I am about finished with Alister McGrath's bio of John Calvin. I have learned so much from this book. Long term assumptions about Calvin, Calvinism and the Reformed Church tradition are being challenged and re-shaped. In a weekly Bible reading group we are about finished with Genesis. I am experiencing the same there. Much more grace and forgiveness in the originating narratives of our faith than normally are assumed.

How do we move beyond the assumptions that have become cemented in "fact" when its clear that those assumptions are not anyway near the content of the original sources? I plan to read Calvin's Institutes next. And then bio's on Hus, Zwingli and Bucer.

The UCC is part of the Reformed tradition and functions as part of the fellowship of the world body of Reformed Churches. Yet I see little if any intentional connection to this tradition. In fact I see more repudiation than affirmation. So, who am I in this midst? Am I changed into what the institution of the UCC claims I am to be as part of it, as it has become more doctrinaire to set boundary markers around what a group wants it to be now? Or have I changed by the grace of God through the Holy Spirit outside of the institution? That's why I am on this historical reading jag now. I should have done this back in seminary!!!!! But now, better late than never.

David Loar
"who moved my cheese?"