 Our conference minister, the distinguished reverend cancelati, will come forward at this time to address the delegates and visitors. Churches full of life, love, faith and joy overflowing into service. Skilled, dedicated, energetic and compassionate people providing inspiring leadership in their communities. Understanding this basic truth, we are all connected. We are the Connecticut Conference of the United Church of Christ. My name is Kent Salati and I serve as conference minister. We believe that God has made us interdependent and that we can do more together than we can as individuals. We work to connect leaders and congregations to learn and to serve. We foster the gifts of young people through outdoor ministry at Silver Lake Conference Center. We labor to eradicate racism through education and public advocacy. We help churches nurture, form, call and equip pastoral and lay leadership. We share our stories. We proclaim the good news. In the churches. In the state house. In the neighborhoods. In the trees. And in the hearts. We are the Connecticut Conference of the United Church of Christ. We are all connected. In Christ this is the day our God has made and we will rejoice in it. Let me begin by a friend of us can make it on our own. Others to live my life. Work with an amazing group of people, relationships and connectedness. And so I would like to invite to stand the conference staff and recognize them as vital partners in our ministry. If you would show is your hand if you're completely completely come church of Christ service is to equip and to encourage members of our communities to live out their baptismal vows in their respective ministries out there in the world who are gathered here today. Deacon chairs, chairs, treasured things within the church, congregations, witness, thrives in the communities in which our churches find themselves. Most of us exercise our leadership outside of the life of the church. Middle man store managers, team leaders, coaches, teachers, principals, lawyers, doctors, shift leaders, state senators, caregivers and a whole host of other things that require us to undertake the important responsibility of leading. We've made it into something beyond. We have taken this title as leader and we treat it as if it's something that one day deserve. But to give it to ourselves, he says right now means a level of arrogance that we are not comfortable with. He goes on to say sometimes that we spend so much rating amazing things that hardly anybody can do that we've convinced ourselves that those are the only things worth celebrating. And we start to devalue the moments when all of us are leaders. The biblical record offers some insight as we at this meeting explore the importance of leadership. Ephesians chapter four, as people worthy of the call you received from God, gentleness and patience. Accept each other with love, an effort to preserve the unity of the spirit with the peace that ties you together. You are one body spirit. Just as God, one hope, there is one Lord, one faith, one baptism and one God and creator of all who is over all through all and in all. He gave some apostles, some prophets, some evangelists and some pastors and teachers. The purpose was to equip God's people for the work of serving and building up the body of Christ until we all reach the unity of faith and knowledge of God's Son. Our commission as leaders is to build up the body of Christ, the body that is one body of which we are all apart. Jesus demonstrated a model of leadership to follow. James and John were with Jesus walking and asked him for special seats in God's realm on the left hand and on the right hand. You remember the other disciples getting really angry probably because they didn't think of that first. Do you remember the response that Jesus gave? Whoever wishes to be great among you must be your servant. Jesus not only preached, but he modeled this kind of leadership. Do you remember him washing the disciples feet? After demonstrating this kind of leadership, he said, I have set you an example that you should also do as I have done to you. You servants are not greater than their master, nor are messengers greater than the one who said them. I shared with you our commitment to strengthening the mission and ministry of our local churches. We stand firm in the belief that the world needs a church that proclaims no matter who you are in life's journey, you are welcome here. The world needs a church that proclaims that God is still speaking. The world needs a church that proclaims that the gospel invites us to be transformed as individuals and then as a community of faith to transform this world that God so loves. We are guided by this principle of Christian connectedness, one Lord, one faith, one baptism. No single congregation can be the church that the world needs today in isolation. To be the church that the world needs today, congregations must be joined together to support and to inspire each other and to lean on each other. To talk about what's working and what the challenges are that we all face. We live reliant upon a fabric woven of mutual interdependence. God calls us to the work of strengthening our interconnected threads. As the United Church of Christ, we know that it is together that we learn, that we grow, and that we love. With a spirit of mutuality, we strive to build faithful leaders and vital communities of churches here in the state of Connecticut, each and all of us proclaiming a radical welcome that embraces all of God's children. We fulfill our mission by encouraging faith leaders to have creative and impactful ministries. And we fulfill it by supporting local congregations to live out their missional identity and to become justice-seeking, peacemaking communities of compassion and pursuing our mission together. Our central focus is on leadership and congregational vitality. We are uniting churches in common mission and ministry because God is calling us to do new things, my friends, in some new ways. Our distinctive witness is so urgent in the world in which we live, and our capacity to make a difference is greater when we all work together. Quite a number of interdependent sightings this past year. In fact, I could spend the rest of my time listing the ways in which our working together has strengthened our common witness. Let me share just a few examples of sightings that we have seen around people working together. In the city of New Haven, there are five United Church of Christ congregations that are meeting together to discern if God's spirit is inviting them to share ministry in some new and dynamic ways. United Congregational Church in Bridgeport and Salisbury Congregational Church have established a covenant with one another, which includes commitments to pray for each other to join efforts in serving their neighbors, gathering resources to support the ministries being carried out in their diverse communities, and to share blessings with one another in as many ways as they might imagine. They end their covenant with these words. We will be neighbors and friends, carrying each other to Christ. We will be blessed. At Silver Lake Conference Center, young people come from all across this conference and neighboring conferences in a safe and loving environment to build community and to grow together. Silver Lake is a place where leaders are nurtured and invited to build God's beloved community. Our Give Squared ministry hosted 13 events in four settings where youth from 27 of our congregations came together. For a total of 1,100 hours of service. In Southbury, a tradition of joint Ash Wednesday services by the United Church of Christ of Southbury, the Roxbury Congregational Church, the South Britten Congregational Church, welcomed two additional churches from the region, First Church of Woodbury and North Congregational Church of Woodbury, for a time to co-celebrate Ash Wednesday together. Other joint worship services have become an important part of our interconnected fabric. Our legislative advocacy ministry has brought members of our churches together to advocate and to support legislation around our issues of economic, environmental, and racial justice. Racial Justice Ministry has held trainings for facilitators not only here in our conference, but also in Massachusetts and Rhode Island and even in Kansas-Oklahoma Conference. For the third year in a row, young people of color participated in the Joseph Clemens Training Program and our environmental ministries for the second year in a row hosted Environmental Justice for All event, partnering with the national setting of the United Church of Christ. For the fifth year in a row, a youth revival was held, and the planning team was made up of five of our congregations working together in collaboration with the Bloomfield High School Gospel Choir. Now, the youth have a lot of fun at these revivals, so we have decided that they can't have all the fun. So November 6th and 7th, right back in Bloomfield, we're going to have a revival for the whole community of the Connecticut Conference. Newest staff member, the Reverend Michelle Hughes, our ACM for Transitions will preach the first night, and Reverend Ken Samuels will be preaching the second night. You will not want to miss that opportunity to worship and to be together to revive, to have the spirit revive us again. In Fairfield, the Fairfield County Youth Music Festival was held with four of our congregations participating. Several of our associations host joint mission trips to various locations all across this country. Registrar's of our associations gathered to resource one another around the best practices of that particular ministry. We conducted an experiment this last year in resource generation through social media crowdfunding. And as a result, we raised close to $14,000 to build a leadership studio at the conference offices. This resource allows us to live broadcast, to edit and take content and to bring leaders together for conversations. Local churches can also use this studio to learn more about emerging technologies and to produce their own content. Now the last interdependent sighting I would name is a resolution that is in your packets titled Awakening. A season of discernment for a future of shared ministries that was adopted unanimously by each of the Rhode Island, Massachusetts and Connecticut Conference Board of Directors. This resolution invites all of us to enter into a season of discernment as we listen to how God may be calling our three conferences to either federate or to merge. We are in the midst of designing a way for those conversations to take place over the next year to see how the spirit might be inviting us to new ways of ministry in witness here in Southern New England. And so in the spirit of the resolution, I have one of my colleagues here, Barbara Libby, who is the Interim Conference Minister from Rhode Island. Jim Antall would have joined us in person, but his brother died on Thursday. So I would invite your prayers for him. But Jim, still in the spirit of interdependence, is being brought into our meeting through the miracle of technology and the miracle that Eric Anderson provides to us. Jim. Thanks to Kent for this opportunity to join your gathering in this way. No doubt Kent has shared with you the reason for my absence. And you should know that within a few hours of learning of my brother's death, Kent was on the phone, as was John Dorhauer, expressing their support and prayers. And Barbara was preparing to convene 40 of her pastors to discuss our common resolution on interdependence. I want to share two thoughts. The first builds on what I've already said. The only way I can provide the leadership God calls out of me is to be constantly grateful for all the ways I am connected to and interdependent with Kent and Barbara and John, along with my staff and board of directors back in Massachusetts. The leadership and witness I and we are called to undertake would be impossible without the certain knowledge that God has woven our lives together for a reason. And that reason is to join with others as we lead the transformation of a denominated America to a place where historical religious affiliation matters less than growing a sustainable common future together. A future rooted in the values we share with progressive Christians across denominational lines. A future rooted in UCC nexts as much as our past has been rooted in UCC firsts. A future in which the church insists that the laws of the land protect not only the rights of future generations, but also nature itself. A truly united church is ready to rally behind a prophetic call that articulates a repurposed church ready to meet the challenges of the coming decades. And my other thought emerges from my personal circumstances. Be sure to live with integrity moment to moment to moment. Each moment is a gift, each one a blessing. Every blessing to all of you and thanks. God does indeed continue to weave us together. I bring greetings from the Rhode Island Conference, its pastors, its leaders and the congregations. Rhode Island recognizes the many partnerships and linkages already at work among our three conferences. We could mention the huge youth delegation that went from our three conferences to Synod, a shared Haiti mission opportunity, the racial justice training of leaders among our three conferences, committee on ministry trainings that we share together and of course our Super Saturdays. Rhode Island is excited to move into a season of discernment with Massachusetts and Connecticut as we lean into determining what God and the Holy Spirit calls us to do and be as we move into the future together. Last night our General Minister and President John Doerrhauer suggested that the Holy Spirit is already tilling the soil and I agree. We may wonder where God is calling us and John also reminded us. Unity at the table enables us to fulfill our calling. Let us continue to be both brave and faithful as we listen carefully together for the still-speaking God who invites us into new opportunities for service and mission together as partners. I love the words of a new hymn called Restless Weaver and it continues to build on this idea of our weaving things together. The words are Restless Weaver still conceiving new life, now and yet to be, binding all your vast creation in our living tapestry. You have called us to be weavers. Let your love guide all we do. With your reign of peace, our pattern, we will weave your world anew. May it be so. So I am grateful to Jim and Barbara for their partnership with our conferences and for their leadership as well as we have shared these interdependence sightings and continue to lift up this vision of our connectedness. I am reminded that interdependence is a process vision. I would like to suggest that there is another word that begins with the letter I that complements this vision for our collective ministry. Now I promise not to come back every year with a new I word, but that word is impact. Marianne Williamson has said that our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens ourselves. We ask, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented and fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. You're playing small, she says, does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people will not feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God within us. It's not just in some of us. It is in every one of us. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give others the permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others. Who? Me? Yes, you. As servant leaders of Jesus, we are called to make an impact. We have been called to be disciples who believe in our bones that the gospel both saves and changes lives. As leaders, we are called to cast a vision that is centered in God. As leaders, it is our responsibility to gather in our communities and to invite our community to align itself around a common vision. We motivate, we help change, be ushered in, and we work hard to help multiply leadership in our midst. Who? Me? Yes, you. Leaders in gender trust. Leaders have fun. Leaders develop cultural competencies to read and adapt to the culture in which we live and to find ways to authentically speak the gospel truth. Leaders follow through on commitments. Leaders are self-aware. Leaders do what is right, embrace the unknown, endure in spite of circumstances, lead by example, experiment, and yes, learn from those mistakes. Leaders love God and leaders love people. Leaders are passionate for what they believe in. Leaders believe that impact comes about by aligning ourselves to what God wants us to be and to do. Leaders work on mobilizing Holy Spirit power to live out a common mission. One of the most important skills in being a leader is asking really good questions. We need to embrace questions. We surely, I know in my bones, are skeptical of any leader in our midst that says that they have all the answers. That doesn't exactly work out, does it, in the United Church of Crest. So what are some questions that we should be asking ourselves as leaders? When is the last time you heard from God? Is our leadership informed by God's vision and God's leading direction? What is God doing in this community where we find ourselves? What are we as a faith community passionate about? What is it that we cannot let go of that holds our attention, that drives our focus, that drives our passions and our mission? What impact, what difference does our local church make in our community, in our state, in our nation and in our world? How are we changing lives? What do we need to learn? Who in our community should we partner with to make an impact? God has called each one of us into this moment of time. These surely are interesting times to be in leadership together. In just a few moments you will have the opportunity to meet with your colleagues assembled for this annual meeting. You are encouraged to share your wisdom, your questions, your experience and your insights with one another. Who? Me? Yes, of course you. Churches full of life, love, faith and joy overflowing into service. Skilled, dedicated, energetic and compassionate people providing inspiring leadership in their communities. Understanding this basic truth, we are all connected. We are the Connecticut Conference of the United Church of Christ. My name is Kent Salati and I serve as conference minister. We believe that God has made us interdependent and that we can do more together than we can as individuals. We work to connect leaders and congregations to learn and to serve. We foster the gifts of young people through outdoor ministry at Silver Lake Conference Center. We labor to eradicate racism through education and public advocacy. We help churches nurture, form, call and equip pastoral and lay leadership. We share our stories. We proclaim the good news. In the churches, in the state house, in the neighborhoods, in the trees and in the hearts. We are the Connecticut Conference of the United Church of Christ. We are all connected.