Beyond Lament, Big, Joyful Service calls UCC Worshipers to go ‘Deeper’

The United Church of Christ always has this megachurch moment at the midpoint of its General Synod.

It’s an experience most UCC people don’t get every Sunday. A thousand worshipers gather in a convention hall. Multiple video cameras and screens share the ambient beauty of a lavish stage. Singers harmonize from a row of mics, backed by a crackerjack band – guitar, drums and keyboards.

That same energy and joy, progressive-Christian-style, showed up at this year’s Synod community worship, held Sunday afternoon, July 13, at the Kansas City Convention Center.

There was diversity in race, culture, age and gender, and inclusive language for God and people. There was scripture as metaphor.

There were joyful songs of justice, freedom and kindness, “to help you decolonize your worship space,” as music leader Monty Jackson put it. The singers and the band came from the church he pastors, Kindred UCC, Maplewood, Missouri.

And there was a solution to a puzzle.

“Into the Deep,” the theme of this year’s Synod, comes from a sea-based story in Luke 5: boats, nets, a command of Jesus, and a big catch of fish. Yet a land-based image has dominated the hall during the first three days of the meeting: a colorful digital mural of prairie grass, ferns, wildflowers, forests and mountains – fitting for the host region. The staging for the worship service added live plants and grasses, soil and rocks, and figurines of prairie animals – with Christian symbols, a cross and a bubbling font, set among them.

The day’s preacher, UCC General Minister and President/CEO the Rev. Karen Georgia Thompson, cleared up any confusion.

“Out here on the plains, the deep is understood in the depth of the prairie grass,” she said. Its deep roots, though unseen, keep soil healthy and help the grass itself survive harsh conditions. “This too,” she said, “is what it means to go into the deep: to ground ourselves in ways that allow us to be resilient and impact the ecosystem around us in positive ways.”

Then she talked about lakes, seas, rivers and oceans. “Pressing out into the deep takes risk and requires care. Into the deep in our relationships with God and others means that we may get in over our heads. … We may need to go further than we ever have gone before, and yet the presence of God will be with us.”

She invoked another scriptural passage, the famous “dry bones” passage from Ezekiel 37, as she called the church and its people to depth and resilience amid troubles in the U.S. and the world.

One among several examples was a U.S. budget law passed last week “that will result in millions using access to health care, to anti-hunger programs and anti-poverty resources.” “Meanwhile,” she said, “that same bill provided tax cuts for the wealthy, increased the national debt, and will increase military spending.”

“We lament the experiences of those in need,” she said. “We cry out for justice in the public square, and at times it feels like we are crying into the wilderness, shouting into a vacuum with no one listening or responding.”

To get courage and energy to breathe life into such a valley of dry bones, the church will need to go deeper – into relationships with God and neighbor.

“It matters not where your neighbor is – in the prairie, by the sea or on the lake. It matters not what you use to measure depth,” she said “No matter who you are or where you are on this journey, you are being invited to go deeper into the heart of the divine.” Worshipers gave over $15 thousand by text, online and in cash during the service. This will be split between the two bodies of the UCC hosting the Synod: the Kansas-Oklahoma and the Missouri Mid-South conferences. The former will pass its dollars along to two community recipients:  Sisu Youth Services, Oklahoma City, and True Colors of Flint Hills, Manhattan, Kansas, both serving LGBTQ populations. The latter’s will go to two affiliates of the UCC’s Council for Health and Human Service Ministries: Unleashing Potential, St. Louis; and Emmaus Homes, serving the Missouri counties of Franklin, Warren, St. Charles and St. Louis.

Please enjoy the photo gallery. Photographs taken by C.L. ‘Curly’ Stumb.

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