An Easter Message from the Moderator I have just come from a week of meetings with our Senior Leadership Team, in Austin, Texas, and we are fired up! I wish every one of you could have been in the room this week as we prayed and reflected together every day, in our own time of preparation for Holy week. In our every prayer, we thought of you, our local pastors and lay leaders, our members and friends of MCC, in this time of challenge and change in the world. We know that we work together with you, great things are happening! In the midst of all the last minute details, choir rehearsals and sermon preparations and special outreach efforts, we want you to remember several things:
You are making a difference in the lives of people and in your community. Sometimes we get recognition for that, sometimes we don't, but the fact is that your ministry has saved lives, has blessed lives, and has inspired people to create lives and churches that matter in today's world. We love you and need you to keep that fact in the center of your hearts and minds.
Although none of us has all the resources we need to do what we dream of doing, just for today we can be thankful for the resources we have and the people we work with, who give so much of themselves. Stressful economic times have a way of frustrating us. When we remember that MCC started in someone's home with $3.12 USD, we know that God is a Provider. If we limit God's power to our financial resources, we will always feel discouraged. God is greater than our limitations. God's abundance is promised to us!
The Holy One who raised Jesus from the dead lives in us today! Jesus' resurrection is the source of our hope, for the present and the future. As we are raised up as a people, as a movement in the world, whose hallmark is love, liberation, justice and hope, we know that it is the presence of the Living Christ in our ministries and churches that is worth giving our lives to, every day.
As we reflect in solidarity this week with our brothers and sisters in Uganda, who long for human rights, freedom to be who they are, and spiritual community, we are humbly blessed! As we pray in solidarity with our brothers and sisters in the Philippines, who have been faithful to MCC for decades, and who are now in a time of unprecedented growth, our anchor of ministry in Asia, we are in awe of God's grace! As we contemplate what it means for us to hear God's prophetic word of comfort and hope in our own language, we celebrate this week in solidarity with those in Russia, and Russian-speaking countries who need our Russian language resource on homosexuality and the Bible, and human rights, today!
May Easter this year be more than the culmination of Lent and Holy Week. May it be an outpouring of passion for our mission that moves us to a new Pentecost -- Pentecost for every new person who walks through the doors this Easter, for every new MCC church being imagined this week, for every expression of radical inclusivity that is on its way. . .
Happy Easter, MCC!
Nancy |
MCC represented at The White House Easter Prayer Breakfast MCC was well represented at this week's Easter Prayer Breakfast hosted by U. S. President Barack Obama. The breakfast was held at The White House in observance of Holy Week, with 130 clergy and denominational heads present. 
In attendance were, from left to right, Bishop Yvette Flunder, Senior Pastor of City of Refuge UCC in San Francisco, California, who is also MCC clergy; Rev. Harry Knox, Senior Pastor of Resurrection MCC in Houston, Texas; and Rev. Elder Nancy Wilson, Moderator of MCC. Additional pictures are posted on MCC's Facebook page. Click here to see them, and below are a couple links to The White House website: Introduction by President Obama, opening prayer by Bishop Vashti McKenzie (If you look closely, you can see our Moderator on the Right side of the screen during crowd shots at 1:11-1:14 and 5:59-6:09 in this video.) Transcript of President Obama's remarks |
27-30 July 2011
