In another episode of Go Tell It On The Mountain, The Rev. Elizabeth Chandler Felts tells Executive Conference Minister the Rev. Darrell Goodwin that the search committee that called her to serve described their church - Beneficent Congregational Church UCC, in Providence, RI - as a "messy downtown church."

"I said: that's the church for me. I'm ready for messy," said Rev. Felts, who had served six other churches and as a hospice chaplain in various parts of the country prior to coming to Providence over three years ago.

"Beneficent is a bit of an anomaly in New England," she said. "It's robustly multiracial. It is aggressively open and affirming. It has a huge spectrum, theologically, everything from confirmed atheists to old line liberals to Pentecostals to people who also practice Judaism and ancestor worship and Rastafarianism and Buddhism and other things. It's a great range of ages. And it also has a huge socioeconomic spectrum."

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Two key Silver Lake Camp and Retreat Center staffers – Jennifer Kronholm Clark and Matt Taylor – have announced plans to leave the Conference staff this month to pursue other opportunities.

Silver Lake is looking to bring in an Interim Program Director and an Ecological Task Force Supervisor for the summer to fill the gaps.

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In this piece, Debbie Gline Allen, Minister of Faith Formation, interviews Heather Rochette, founder of the Bridge Initiative at Townsend Congregational Church. Rochette says: 

"The Bridge Initiative is an action-oriented movement that addresses how we treat others. It is noticing who is different from ourselves and allowing the hand of God to guide us to take action, letting others know they are not alone. In the context of what it means to follow Jesus, we say that it’s okay to be different. Yet, often outside of the church, and even sometimes inside, that is not always the case."

The Southern New England Conference, UCC, officially formed in January 2020. But the churches, associations, and historic conferences have a heritage that goes back nearly 400 years, forming a foundation upon which we in the present come together to find new ways of living the Love and Justice of Jesus.

May Environmental Ministry Calendar
Educational events and actions to take for climate justice, Curated by Victoria Guest for the SNEUCC Environmental Ministry Team