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from the Minister & President
Don't Keep This UCC Secret

July/August, 2004
Nancy S. Taylor

John Thomas, General Minister and President of the United Church of Christ, was meeting with marketing executives at Gotham Incorporated, a New York City ad firm. They described themselves as lapsed Protestants, lapsed Catholics and lapsed Jews. A month prior to this meeting, they hadn't heard of the United Church of Christ. Now they were offering to do a national ad campaign for us at cost. Why? They told John Thomas that they had come to the conclusion that the United Church of Christ is important to the future of this country. They were both surprised and excited by what they had learned about us: our history, our firsts, our mission and ministries, our way of understanding the twin pursuits of justice and righteousness, our way of being church. Indeed, they were so impressed they were moved to action and to an extraordinary gift of generosity. The United Church of Christ, they said, is one of the best kept secrets and there are hurting, lost and disaffected people who need to hear about us.

These NYC executives believe we are well-suited to these post-modern times: cellular, fragmented, less institutionalized than many denominations and, therefore, lighter on our feet, more agile, more able to act as a movement.

A group of young adults were meeting over pizza in our office recently. I overheard them searching for ways to tell their contemporaries that in the United Church of Christ, going to church doesn't stink (they were searching for a better word) and that Jesus is cool.

Like the executives from Gotham Inc., these young adults want to tell the world that the United Church of Christ is, Christianly speaking, a pretty great place to be. As one of our ads claims, "while our faith is 2000 years old, our thinking is not." Here then, are representatives of two diverse "markets" ­ urbane NYC executives and engaged, faithful UCC young adults. They have each discovered the United Church of Christ as a distinctive, welcoming, exciting, risk-taking, faith-forming, life-changing community of disciples.

These are the kinds of people our UCC ad campaign is designed to attract. A test series of ads in selected areas across the nation, including Western Massachusetts, received incredibly positive feedback. Assuming we can raise the funds, the ads go national in Advent and we will all have the unprecedented opportunity of capitalizing on terrific ads to find our voices as evangelists and to live out the great commission: Jesus' charge to us to go out there and make disciples.

If you and your church want to be a part of this, get ready. The Conference will run seminars on evangelism, welcome and hospitality at five locations across Massachusetts in the fall. Each congregation is invited to send teams of faithful, able leaders. Associations and Areas will kick-off the StillSpeaking Initiative with large All Saints StillSpeaking Worship events (there are 12 scheduled across the Conference). We hope each church will send a busload to the service/event nearest them.

The StillSpeaking Initiative is intended as a catalyst to recall us to our own deep potential as Christian disciples, to help us find our voices of welcome and evangelism, and to inspire and encourage our generosity as a people who, in giving, receive and in dying, are born to new life.