Conference Minister's Corner 5.27.26

Conference Ministers’ Corner

By: Conference Minister, Rev. Gordon Rankin

5.27.26

The Spirit Symphony

A few years ago, I was at a gathering where we were talking about mediating church conflict. At one point, our facilitator stopped us and made us engage in a more intentional spiritual task.  We were given ten minutes and the writing prompt to tell the story of what we’ve learned.  What I wrote that day has become my Pentecost “prayer” for the church ever since:

“Once upon a time there was a great group of instrumentalists known as the Spirit Symphony. The members of the Symphony longed for the same thing – to make the most beautiful music the Spirit could write.

Sometimes the symphony achieved its goal and made beautiful spirit music. Sometimes it did not.

Sometimes the members of the Symphony would become distracted by things like figuring out which melody or harmony needed to be the dominant one heard. Sometimes the tempo at which some wanted to play couldn’t be matched by others. Sometimes the music demanded different instrumentation, and a clarinet player would need to figure out how to be a percussionist.

There were many challenges for the instrumentalists: valuing the voice of each instrument, finding a common tempo, and learning to make music in new ways. But despite all such challenges, they were able to make music together.

There was but one thing that ever silenced the Spirit Symphony. No music was ever heard when those with instruments in their hands stopped listening for the beauty of the sounds they made together.”

-Rev. Gordon Rankin

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Melt the ICE HATS

The NHCUCC’s unique Immigrant Bond & Support Fund, managed by our Immigrant & Refugee Support Group (IRSG), is under tremendous strain. As we’ve all read in the news, ICE detentions have become more and more sweeping and indiscriminate.

As a result, the Strafford County Jail in Dover (which has an ICE detention contract with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security) is packed with individuals in ICE detention. One of our conference's most compelling ministries is our commitment to making very modest monetary deposits ($35 per deposit) to our ICE-detained siblings’ jail commissary accounts so they can purchase food to assuage their hunger, a warm sweatshirt, personal hygiene items—and, especially, desperately needed phone calls to the outside world. The IRSG is now spending $3,000 or more monthly for this essential “lifeline” -- as we endeavor to bring a little hope and UCC love of neighbor to 80 or more individuals in ICE detention in Dover each month.

To help shore up the IRSG's rapidly dwindling funds, generous and creative knitters from South Church UCC in Concord stepped in by knitting and selling miniature “Melt the ICE hats” as pins!

These “hat pins” helped South Church raise over $2100 to benefit the jail commissary ministry of the IRSG, resulting in support for over 60 individuals in ICE detention. South Church Knitters crafted 200 of these small "Melt the ICE* hat pins and made them available within their congregation and at the No Kings Rally for a donation to the Immigrant Bond & Support Fund. The hats are appealing, and the stories and needs of those in ICE detention are compelling. Donors were generous! The hats can be pinned onto clothing, representing year-round resistance to ICE activities plus support for immigrants in our state and nationwide.