CHHSM News

New UCC General Minister Visits CHHSM

At its November 2009 meeting, the CHHSM Board spent an hour talking with the UCC's new General Minister and President, the Rev. Geoffrey Black. Black was elected to his post in June 2009 after nine years as Conference Minister of the UCC's New York Conference.

Since he took office, Black reported that he has convened, in conferences across the church, a series of small group conversations about the future of the UCC. During his time with the CHHSM Board, he gave some answers to the question that he has been asking other around the church: "What is your hope or dream for this faith community?"

"My hope," he began, "is that the UCC would grow to be more organic as a faith community." Criticizing the church's tendency to live in silos, Black stressed the need for the UCC to integrate its organizational structure and sprit. "We must become a faith family that is much more self-aware of the whole." Reaching that goal will entail some structural changes, he said, but will also require the willingness of leaders and church members to be engaged throughout all settings of the UCC.

Speaking specifically about CHHSM, Black noted the importance of the UCC's historic health and human service ministry, but lamented the tendency of the church not to see CHHSM as "a part of the whole."

In response to Black's comments, several CHHSM Board members commented on the difficulty of sustaining UCC relationships when churches are graying and judicatory structures are often mired in political turmoil and resulting budgetary crises. "Around the church, how do we strengthen our ties between the church and its historic roots in health and human service ministry?" asked Darlene Sowell, CEO of Neighborhood Houses in St. Louis.

Black acknowledged the current difficulty of the UCC by saying: "We are suffering from decades in which we did not ask people to consider a life of service to the church," he said. "As a result, we have a gap of leadership in churches right now."

In closing the conversation with a promise to attend a future CHHSM meeting, Black returned to the topic of his hope for the UCC, mentioning specifically the work of the Council for Theological Education. "We are asking seminaries to consider this question: 'What is the church that they're preparing leadership for?'"

To learn more about Geoffrey Black's hopes for the UCC, read the column he wrote for the Washington Post shortly after his installation, and the UCC News story about his muli-city listening tour across the church.