General Synod officially started this today with registration,
opening plenary, the introduction of honored guests and officials, and opening
worship. I actually started the day
rather late and hit the Synod just after lunch.
After arriving at
DeVos
Place I spent time hanging out at the 2030 Clergy
Network booth with NPT folks and met a bunch of 2030 colleagues who wandered by
in the exhibition hall.
The opening plenary session took place mid-afternoon and it
was a pretty typical opening business session—complete with rules, introduction
of the Synod officials, and a series of reports. The highlight of the plenary was, in my mind
anyway, the procession of placards representing all the churches that have been
recently born into the UCC. The
procession was good news amid difficult financial reports and forecasts!
After dinner at a local hot dog joint with 2030 colleagues (Yay
for vegi dogs!) I hit the 2030 booth again before the evening’s opening
worship. Opening worship started with a plenary
session that included the official introduction of the Rev. Geoffrey Black, who
is the candidate for General Minister and President of the UCC. Rev. Black’s address was further evidence of
his suitability for the position and included a wonderfully gracious shout-out to
the 2030 Clergy Network!
After shifting from business session into worship mode we
were treated to an opening worship that featured incredible music, beautiful dance
and the inspiring and overwhelming preaching of the Rev. Otis Moss III from Chicago’s Trinity United
Church of Christ. All the featured musicians and dancers also
joined us from Trinity—thus putting the Synod in touch with the UCC’s largest
church. Rev. Moss’s sermon focused on
the first 8 verses of the book of Revelation and into that text he pasted a
critique of the ways we use punctuation to limit and define God. It was a brilliant take on the UCC’s “Never
place a period where God has placed a comma” campaign and including powerful
social analysis, incredible and driving cadence, and a renewed call to the United
Church of Christ to refuse to limit the power of God’s love, stewardship,
compassion, and call. Moss called out
the “empire” that endorses torture, that engages in unjust warfare, that does
not protect its children…and he did so in a way that his critique was clearly
pulled from the notion that all of these are failures because human beings and
governments have acted in a way that limits the potential of God. Moss was the perfect pastoral and prophetic
voice to kick-off Synod…
Finally, the evening ended with search and eventual success for
an after-hours gathering for 2030 folks.
After being invited by some young adults to the young adult gathering
those of us who felt like we had (unfortunately) moved beyond the young adult
age range instead found another place to gather. The invitation and obvious youth of the young
adult crowd was more than enough of a reminder that I can’t even come close to
claiming the young adult label…
And after this posts it is (past) time to crash as the River City Saturday portion of Synod starts in just over 6 hours…
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