I’m writing this article immediately following the close of the event on Tuesday afternoon. It was a wonderful event, filled with many talented and passionate people, and you could truly feel the spirit of God moving among us.
Justice and Witness Ministries is one of the four covenant partners in the UCC. That is fancy church polity language for saying, the Office of Justice and Witness Ministries lives at the very heart of what it means to be the United Church of Christ. In fact, our history as a denomination really cannot be told separately from the stories of justice work that our brothers and sisters in the UCC have undertaken – from the first efforts to abolish slavery to modern day efforts for marriage equality, immigration reform, and environmental justice.
The Southwest Conference (of which we are a part, along with the 42 other UCC churches in Arizona, New Mexico, and even a little bit of Texas) also has a Justice and Witness Committee that is charged with empowering and enabling the work of justice in, among, through, and with our UCC Congregations. On Monday and Tuesday of this past week the Southwest Conference’s Justice and Witness Committee sponsored a Justice and Witness Summit. It was held at Shepherd of the Hills UCC, was attended by pastors and delegates from all over the Conference, and started to answer the question together, “If Justice were to be taken seriously as a mission effort in the Southwest Conference, what would it look like?”
We started to address that question (indeed it will take some time to unpack it all and prepare the systematic steps to really take that work seriously), but now it has me wondering, “If Justice were to be taken seriously as a mission effort at the Encanto Community Church, what would it look like?” I look forward to our continuing to answer that question together too!
Yours in the journey, Rev. Brian
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