At the recent Super Saturday, Rebekah Anderson gave a message in which she broke down the story of the Good Samaritan - and then put it back together. Video of her address is now available.
 
Anderson is an alum of the Connecticut Conference's Thinking About Working for God Apprenticeship and the UCC Young Adult Service Communities, and is in her first year at Union Theological Seminary. 

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Related: Workshop Proposals Being Accepted for October Super Saturday

Super Saturday - October 5, 2019
Keefe Regional Technical High School, Framingham, MA
Share concepts and practices you’ve developed that are changing your congregation or community’s mission and ministry by submitting a workshop proposal. As a workshop leader, your registration will be free. Submission deadline:  May 2019

Submit your proposal here

he Connecticut, Massachusetts and Rhode Island conferences of the United Church of Christ are taking the unprecedented step of joining together to form a new Conference.

But that Conference needs a name!

You can help in naming this new conference by taking the survey found at: togetheras1.org/name

The survey will ask you to pick your top three choices from names that have been suggested, with your reasons why. You can also submit new suggestions.

Learn more about the formation of a new Conference at: togetheras1.org .

Rev. Heather Ramsey Mabrouk Called to Serve as Program Coordinator for Together We Thrive Initiative

The Rev. Heather Ramsey Mabrouk has been called to serve as Program Coordinator for the Together We Thrive Initiative In October 2018, the Massachusetts Conference of the United Church of Christ was awarded a $1 million grant for clergy development from Lilly Endowment Inc. The five year grant is being used in collaboration with the Connecticut and Rhode Island Conferences, the Episcopal Diocese of Western Massachusetts and the New England Synod - ELCA Lutheran. The Together We Thrive proposal was submitted under the Massachusetts Conference name, but was developed cooperatively by a team of people from each of the organizations and is being used by them together. The Rev. Ramsey Mabrouk has served churches in Marblehead, Beverly, and a suburb of Buffalo over the past 14 years.  In New York and Massachusetts, she has led workshops on Youth Ministry and Christian Education, planned and facilitated Conference-wide Confirmation Retreats, taught Boundary Awareness Training, created community-wide ecumenical worship opportunities, and given Interfaith presentations with her husband Nawfal, who is Sunni Muslim. Read more

By TJ Harper, Racial Justice Associate for the MA and CT Conferences, UCC.

When reading an article in National Geographic, I was amazed because a new phase of matter was discovered: “an unusual state of potassium” that is “solid and liquid at the same time.”  For years, in elementary school science classes, I learned that there were essentially three types of matter: solid, liquid, and gas (and later in college plasma also became part of the equation).  However, I had never heard of an intersection of any of the states of matter until now. For many years, I had a rather limited view on what it meant to be matter.
 
Moving beyond the science aspects of matter, what does it mean to matter in America? Why, in some contexts, is it taboo to say, “Black Lives Matter” or “Love Thy Muslim Neighbor”?  Is our societal view so myopic that people who do not conform to, or align with, social constructs cannot matter? What is the responsibility of people of faith to help redefine social matter in America?   These are questions that I wrestle with on a daily basis; questions that cannot remain unanswered.

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