Pictures and Thoughts from General Synod 30

Pictures and Thoughts from General Synod 30

As many of you are aware and as Pastor Mindy discussed in her sermon this morning.  Pastor Mindy and I were privileged to be delegates from the Ohio Conference to General Synod 30 in Cleveland two weeks ago.  The resolutions that were proposed can be found at http://synod.uccpages.org/resolutions/index.html (I don’t see the final versions as voted on posted yet, but they will be there at some point).  The ones that made the news were primarily the ones related to Israel and Palestine.  You can see some explanation of what action was actually taken here and here.  Also the videos of nearly every minute of the plenary sessions and worship can be found at https://www.youtube.com/user/uccvideos/videos. It was an honor to represent Grace UCC, the Central Southeast Ohio Association, and the Ohio Conference as a delegate to General Synod.  It was a joy to worship with 4,000-5,000 others and hear the outstanding preaching of Rev. Molly Baskette, Rev. Dwayne Royster, Rev. Mitri Raheb, and Rev. Sharon Watkins, to hear the keynotes of Rev. Paul Raushenbush, Connie Schultz, and Winona LaDuke.  We also celebrated and welcomed 67 new churches or ministries including two new online congregations since the last General Synod two years ago.  General Synod is also sort of a big family reunion, so it was good to see folks that I’ve known for many years, but haven’t seen recently and to meet and make new friends.  The days were long, but there was also plenty of time to have a little fun.  Here are a few pictures, some taken by me or Pastor Mindy, some from the UCC twitter feed, some from the Connecticut Conference twitter feed.

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