 Greetings friends. Welcome to CTUCC Conference Cast for March 29th, 2012, the regular podcast of the Connecticut Conference of the United Church of Christ. Whoever you are and wherever you may be on life's journey at this very moment, you are welcome here. We begin this week's conference cast with this meditation from the Reverend Sarah Verrasco, Fairfield County Regional Minister. Mark tells of Jesus' institution of the meal we call Holy Communion in the 14th chapter of his gospel. How at the last supper he had with his friends before his crucifixion, Jesus took bread and broke it and gave it to his disciples and told them that it was his body. How after supper Jesus took the cup and blessed it and gave it to his followers and told them it was his blood. I've always been drawn to the sacrament of communion. As a young child I vividly remember being fascinated by the work of the women in the kitchen on those first Sundays of the month, carefully cutting the cubes of bread and filling the small glasses with grape juice. As an observer, this work looked and sounded very different than the cutting of the coffee cake and filling of the pitchers for afterworship. There was plenty I didn't understand at that time, but I knew what they were doing was important. When it came time for the sharing of the bread and cup and worship, a similar sense of importance was evident as plates and trays were passed with great care. The pace was slow, the music was gentle, and according to our minister, God was with us somehow in the bread and the juice. My connection to communion has really lasted my entire life, but it was only in the months following my mother's death that I began to understand from the inside out how Jesus could be present in the breaking of the bread and the sharing of the cup. You see there were a few select things that my mother and I used to do together on a regular basis. Go to church, go to the pool in the summer, go to shop right on Saturday mornings, deliver newspapers on Sunday morning, and share Hot Cross Buns in Lent. The last ritual on the list is the one that taught me about the power of communion. The ritual actually started on Saturdays in Lent when my mother would pick up a box of Entomins Hot Cross Buns, which were a special treat for when we got home. After the shopping and unpacking were complete, we'd sit down at the table and my mother would open the box. I'd point to the one that looked the best and she'd carefully remove it from the package, break it in half, and pass me my half on a plate. We did this every week between Ash Wednesday and Easter for as long as I can remember. It was our little ritual, it was special, and it was important to us. As you might imagine, there was an interruption in the weekly ritual in high school and college, but there was usually a Sunday when we were together and we would share our Hot Cross Bun without missing a beat. In the summer of 1990, my mother died, and the following winter I was in the grocery store and noticed the Entomins Hot Cross Buns. My eyes immediately filled with tears as I reached for the box and brought it home. And it was in the breaking of the bun that I felt my mother's presence and experienced our everlasting connection. I actually felt her smiling from across the table. How have you come to know Jesus' presence in the breaking of the bread and the sharing of the cup? Here's a prayer for this week. Thank you, God, for the many ways you feed us through your presence, in ritual, in story, in song, and in the everlasting connections we share with others. Please remember in your prayers as well this week the family and friends of the Reverend Dr. Gabe Campbell, former pastor of the first congregational church UCC of Stamford. He died on February 1st at the age of 78. In the news this week, over 160 people came to first congregational church UCC in Cheshire last Saturday for March in the Sun, a day of learning about ways to be church. During opening worship, participants took broken pieces of colored glass and fixed them to a very plain wooden cross. Brokenness transformed and redeemed to beauty. The theme of the day was change. As the Reverend Dr. Christina Lizardy-Hashby, UCC's minister for Christian faith formation research told worshipers in the morning sermon. Clicking to our own way, that is the brokenness we must be, that we know no other way of being church, which is another aspect of our brokenness. This is the message of lead, an in reality the central message that the church finds itself in the current event of age, an age that is not yet fully realized. In some ways, we don't know what to expect or what's coming, and that's part of the beauty of it. We simply know what we are called to do, and that story never changes. From brokenness to wholeness, from death to new life, from an old story to a new story. Let us believe that we're still speaking, still acting God above all. With over 80 on the waiting list for the event, planners are already at work on a follow-up program. We choose kindness. We choose blessing. We choose peace. We choose love. We choose Christ. We choose Christ. With those words, members of the first congregational church UCC of Stamford dedicated a giant rainbow banner, which now adorns the stone bell tower of the church, a symbol of affirmation and welcome. Trustee David Ventiner said in a testimony during worship, That rainbow banner there works in two ways. It's a proclamation of welcome to all the other welcome, but it is also a reminder to us and to God of His promise not to destroy unrelief. It's a prayer to Him to sustain this community, to not let churches die in our generation as the membership has been dwindling around us. So, and also to instead help us to reach out to where it feels abandoned, to help us satisfy the needs around us with good things. The Stamford congregation adopted an open and affirming covenant which affirms people into the full life of the church without regard to gender, age, race, or sexual orientation in 2007. Interim Senior Minister, the Reverend Dr. Jane Anne Groom suggested the placement of the banner, and despite practical obstacles with mounting it on the tower, congregational leaders adopted the idea eagerly. In her sermon, which reflected on the unbinding of Lazarus, Dr. Groom said, The world today is more welcoming than it has been, but as long as anyone suffers from homophobia, as long as any young person or old person for that matter struggles with this as an issue of their identity with feelings of self-hatred, there is unbinding to do. On the same morning, members of the First Church of Christ Congregational UCC in Men's Field prayerfully retired signs that have stood on the church's lawn for seven years, which disclose the cost of the war in Iraq. This done as American troops return home at last from that conflict. The signs displayed the number of Americans killed 4,486, over 32,000 of them wounded, and the estimate of over 115,000 Iraqi civilians who died in the course of the war. Two signs which read honoring the fallen and praying for peace remain. As Connecticut's General Assembly considers an end to the state's death penalty, Interim Conference Minister, the Reverend Charles L. Wildman wrote to authorized ministers and local churches of the conference last week asking for members to write their legislators and urge them to support repeal. Lent, he said, offers an ideal time to work for the abolition of Connecticut's death penalty. Wildman will join other ecumenical leaders in a stations of the cross march at 9.30 a.m. next Tuesday, April 3rd from Christchurch Cathedral to the State Capitol building in Hartford. Coordinated by the Episcopal Diocese of Connecticut, the organizers invite clergy and lay people of all traditions to join. The march, in addition to remembering the progress of Jesus from his trial to his crucifixion on Good Friday, is also a declaration of our opposition as people of faith to the use of capital punishment. Delegates to the Connecticut Conference UCC have been on record opposing the death penalty since 1973. Other stories on our website this week include a profile of the Reverend Elizabeth Allen, pastor now of the Milton Congregational Church UCC, and the announcement that Associate Conference Minister for Generosity Ministries Patricia Bjorling will assume the duties of Connecticut's coordinator for our church's wider mission, the financial support from local churches to the conference and national settings of the UCC. And with the end of March at hand, we welcome conference archivist John Van Epps to the studio with this Touchstone with History. This month, we continue the story of our first four missionaries after 1812. From the start, the American Board of Commissioners identified four mission fields, people of ancient civilizations like India, China, and later Japan, people of so-called primitive cultures, American Indians, Hawaii, later Africa, peoples of ancient Christian churches in Turkey, and later Mexico and the Philippines, and fourth Muslim peoples, again in the Ottoman Empire and the Philippines. The first missionaries were all male except for those wives who had appointments with their husbands. The first unmarried female missionary was appointed in 1818 as a school mistress among the Cherokee Indians. Cynthia Ferrara was sent to Bombay in 1827 as the superintendent of female schools. These women were exceptions rather than the rule. It was not until about 1900 that women were given full missionary status. Reflecting the culture of the times, foreign missionaries were to be quote Anglo-Saxons. Nevertheless, one black missionary was appointed in 1836, four more in the 1880s, but no more until after 1915. From the beginning, evangelization was the primary focus of missions even for teachers and doctors. This changed by the end of the 1800s such that today most of our missionary work is in education and medicine. All told, over 6,000 missionaries have served in the past 200 years. Registration is open for summer conferences at Silver Lake, as well as for three retreat and work opportunities this spring. The Women's Yoga and Music Retreat, that starts on April 13th, Spring Action Weekend, running April 27th through 29th, and a new men's retreat called On the Edge of Fire, the weekend of May 4th. Learn more and register for these at silverlakect.org. Email, websites, and social networks, oh my, is the title for a daylong workshop on communications for churches to be held in New Britain on April 14th. Green Teams Unite gives local church environmental ministry leaders an opportunity to share stories and ideas in Middletown on April 21st. CET women of the UCC hold their annual meeting on April 28th. May is a busy month, boundary training for authorized ministers on the 3rd, the church historians workshop on the 5th. A still speaking presentation is also on the 5th, and the New England Association of United Church Educators event, Welcoming the Living Stone, runs May 8th through 10th in Craigville, Massachusetts. The 2nd annual Youth Revival is on May 11th, and the Spring Meeting of the Connecticut Conference featuring keynote speaker Lillian Daniel speaking on Why Church Matters is May 12th in Suffield. Sign up now for the National Youth event. This great gathering of youth ages 13 through 18 will be held July 10th through 14th at Purdue University in Indiana. We're taking registrations and granting scholarships. Sign up by May 7th to be on board one of the two bus trips to get young people to these five days of dynamic workshops, inspiring worship, hands-on service projects, and rockin' recreation and music. A service bus includes a stop in Cleveland, Ohio for a mission project and to tour the UCC's national offices. The express bus will leave a little later and go straight on to Purdue. You'll find more information at ctucc.org slash n-y-e. And you can always learn more about what's coming up in the conference at ctucc.org slash events. And that brings this conference cast to a close. Thanks to Sarah Verrasco for her reflection, the John Van Nepps for our Touchstone with History and to GarageBand for our music. Primary funding for conference cast comes from your congregation's gifts to our church's wider mission, basic support, changing lives through the United Church of Christ. This is Eric Anderson, the Minister of Communications and Technology for the Connecticut Conference of the United Church of Christ, praying that your days as we enter this holy week may be filled with the presence, the guidance, and the grace of God.