Each month we’re asking members of our Justice and Peace Action Network to share their good works with us. It is out hope that these stories will be inspiring and uplifting for all our members, as they are for us.
This month we’ve heard from UCC congregations in Albuquerque, New Mexico who are participating in a powerful ecumenical project to mentor youth who are paroled from juvenile facilities. Centre Congregational Church in Brattleboro, Vermont submitted a beautiful prayer they wrote for their Community Peace Movement. And in Colorado a grassroots network for Latino ministries is forming to explore the potential for multi-cultural ministry faithful to the history and context of the land through faith and justice activities.
Is your church doing exciting justice work? Share your stories with us. Email a brief summary to palatucj@ucc.org.
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| PEP Mentoring Team and Youth |
UCC Congregations in New Mexico Welcome Paroled Youth Back to the Community
In the greater Albuquerque area, UCC congregations are participating in Parole Empowerment Partners (PEP), a project of the New Mexico Conference of Churches (an ecumenical Christian body similar to councils of churches in other states, except that it includes Roman Catholics in its membership). PEP matches mentoring teams with youth that are paroled from juvenile facilities operated by the state. The failure rate last year for these youth to complete parole was over 50%. With a team of mentors assigned to each one, the 22 youth enrolled thus far in PEP are averaging much better than that.
First Congregational UCC of Albuquerque was the very first church of any denomination to form a PEP mentor team. Church of the Good Shepherd UCC (COGS) has had several volunteers trained, and one of them is already part of an inter-church team. COGS has also contributed generously to the financial backing of PEP. St. Paul's United UCC in Rio Rancho has supplied a number of volunteers and has mentored two youth (and tutored another who did not formally enroll in PEP).
Team mentoring is not to be confused with group mentoring, which involves a group of youth meeting together with mentors. Team mentoring means several adults are working with one youth to give individualized attention.
This proved to be very beneficial. When two or more adults are mentoring a youth, the potential is much richer and the experience has the chance to be more positive than with one-on-one. The interpersonal dynamics are more conducive to helping a youth set goals, work to achieve them, figure out how to cope with setbacks, and celebrate successes. The requirement that two or more adults be present in any face-to-face meeting with a youth under 18 addresses a series of safety issues and other complications related to youth mentoring.
By their enthusiasm UCC churches in the Albuquerque area have set a great example for other local congregations. PEP is eager to expand ecumenically and to add to its interfaith outreach as well. There is no religious requirement attached to participation in PEP by any youth, though some have requested teams from their own or another religious community.
Want to get involved? The contact person for the PEP mentoring project of the New Mexico Conference of Churches is the Rev. Daniel Erdman, pastor of Iglesia Congregacional Unida UCC. daniel.e@nmchurches.org
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God Has A Dream- A Prayer from Centre Congregational Church in Vermont
This was used at a community Peace Moment (interfaith) sponsored by Centre Congregational Church, Brattleboro, Vermont. It was written by a former UCC missionary Judy Myrick.
Based on Archbishop Desmond Tutu's book - God Has a Dream.
When we lived in Africa several decades ago, we were privileged to live on the same campus for about a year with a young priest whose name you will recognize: Desmond Tutu, along with his wife Leah and their two young children. At times the little ones would play together, and at times we would all worship together as an ecumenical community where young pastors were in training. Those were times we will never forget, as the days of apartheid (or separation of races) were in full bloom. Yet we were privileged to live side by side with folks of many skin colors: white, black, brown. As a result our interracial community was highly suspect by the government and by the local police force.
Today I would like to share with you the African concept known as UBUNTU. If you want to know more, do read Archbishop Tutu's book, God Has a Dream. Let us read together responsively:
READER: A person is a person THROUGH OTHER PERSONS.
ALL: None of us comes into the world fully formed. We need other human beings in order to be human. I am because other people are. We would not know how to think, or walk, or speak, or behave unless we learned it from other human beings.
READER: We are set in a delicate network of interdependence with our fellow human beings and with the rest of God's creation. Our humanity is caught up in one another's.
ALL: The solitary, isolated human being is really a contradiction in terms. God does not make us too self-sufficient. We have our own gifts and that makes us unique, but I have gifts that you do not have and you have gifts that I do not have.
READER: In Africa recognition of our interdependence is called "ubuntu" in the Nguni language. It is the essence of being human. It speaks of the fact that my humanity is caught up and inextricably bound up in yours. I am human because I belong.
ALL: It speaks about wholeness, about compassion. A person with "ubuntu" is welcoming, hospitable, warm and generous, willing to share, willing to be vulnerable but with a firm self-assurance that comes from knowing that they belong in a greater whole.
READER: You know when "ubuntu" is there, and it is obvious when it is absent. And so we must search for this ultimate attribute and reject ethnicity and other such irrelevancies. A person is a person because he or she recognizes others as persons.
ALL: When we look around, we see God's children suffering everywhere. All over the world you see the growing contrast between the haves and the have-nots, between the powerful and the powerless - a form of global apartheid.
READER: Yet before you can love your neighbor as yourself, you must first love yourself. And to first love yourself, you must know that God loves you now and loves you always. And our partnership with God comes from the fact that we are made in God's image.
ALL: To oppose injustice and oppression is not something that is merely political. No, it is profoundly religious. Our various books of faith are dynamite when they face up to the awfulness of injustice, oppression and racism. We are involved in the struggle BECAUSE of our FAITH, not because we are politically-minded.
READER: Our God is a God who has a bias for the weak, and we who worship this God have no option but to have a special concern for those who are pushed to the edges of society. In the Bible the rainbow is the sign of peace and justice. Let us now join hands in a circle so that we may, even imperfectly, form a rainbow - one that is praying and living and working together on God's behalf.
ALL: Keep me centered in you, O God. Open my heart wider. Continue to change me.
AMEN.
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Grassroots network for Latino ministries started in Colorado
The seed of a grassroots network for Latino/a ministries was birthed in Colorado under the name "Unidos por la Esperanza," when a few pastors and laypeople met last month. The growing group is very interested in the potential of Colorado UCC congregations and individuals for multi-cultural ministry faithful to the history and context of this land. "Unidos por la Esperanza" means "United By Hope" and the scope of vision includes faith and justice activities. A blog had been started by Rev. Malcolm Himschoot and can be found at http://uccesperanza.blogspot.com/.
The group will be connecting with congregations to see what is being offered in terms of Latino/a ministries presently. Some churches have relationships with the Denver Inner City Parish or La Puente in Alamosa, Colorado, as well as mission relationships in Venezuela. Others are in church-share (or rent) arrangements with Spanish language congregations or have ESL or immigration advocacy projects going.
Several pastors already have wanted to be keyed-in to this prayer chain, or developing network, including the pastors of First Congregational Greeley, Kirk of Bonnie Brae, Loveland UCC and United Church of Montbello.
In June, Rev. Kristina Lizardy-Hajbi will be leading a trip of individuals who want to go to the UCC's Centro Romero, on the U.S./Mexico border, to understand more of the dynamics driving Colorado's local issues with immigration, and to develop faithful responses for congregations in the Rocky Mountain region. That will take place June 22-28.
Additionally, in September, Unidos por la Esperanza will be hosting Rev. Linda Jaramillo (originally from Colorado) to lead a worship service for UCC bi-cultural or Latino families throughout the state. The gathering will be in Colorado Springs at the La Foret Conference Center chapel.
Article by: Malcolm Himschoot and Kristina Lizardy-Hajbi
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