SNEUCC ANNUAL MEETING

Friday, June 21, 4:00 pm
University of Massachusetts 1 Campus Center Way Amherst, MA 01003

SAVE THE DATE - Times for each day to be advised. Event takes place 6/21 starting at 4 pm and 6/22/2024 ending at 6 pm.

Update as of 3/27/2024:

The 5th Annual Meeting of the Southern New England Conference of the United Church of Christ will be held June 21 and 22 at UMass, Amherst, and will focus on growing the church.
The keynote speaker for the event will be the Rev. Dr. Courtney Stange-Tregear, the Chief Relationship Officer at the Cornerstone Fund of the UCC, who plans to talk about "God Math," and to share inspiring stories of churches that have grown their ministries - and more greatly impacted their communities - by working smarter, not harder.
"God Math is about the abundance of God’s grace manifest in real and practical ways," she said. "We are not necessarily called to work harder and harder to build the Church; we can work smarter, and with faith and God Math, see our ministries grow and stretch beyond our wildest imaginations."
Rev. Dr. Strange-Treager formerly served the Pacific Northwest Conference as the Minister for Church Vitality and then as the Acting Conference Minister. While in conference leadership she worked to center relationship and storytelling for increased vitality, while drawing on her community organizing background to support and sustain dynamic, collaborative, and intersectional churches.
Also at the meeting, Dr. Erica Dollhopf, the Director of the Center for Analytics, Research & Development, and Data for the UCC, will make a presentation exploring findings from recent research on congregational vitality in the UCC and beyond.
"What if your church already had all the tools it needs to grow in vitality and faithfulness?" she asks. She will also lead participants in an opportunity to engage in the Grow Your Church board game, which is based on the UCC’s Manual on Church’s Marks of Vital and Faithful Churches, a document that draws on vitality research. The game is aimed at helping participants develop actionable ideas to cultivate vitality in their local church settings.
Dr. Dollhopf has authored numerous publications on congregations, congregational vitality, and faith-based nonprofits and is the president of the Association of Statisticians of American Religious Bodies, the research chair for the Faith Communities Today interfaith survey, the secretary of the Religious Research Association, and serves on the Operations Committee of the U.S. Religion Census.
The Scriptural basis for the meeting is Matthew 16:13-20, which tells of Jesus naming Peter as a rock, saying "this is the rock on which I will put together my church, a church so expansive with energy that not even the gates of hell will be able to keep it out."
Several Friday evening activities are being planned as part of the meeting, with plenary and worship held on Saturday. The Rev. Darrell Goodwin, Executive Conference Minister, will be the preacher. Registration will open in April; details will be posted at www.sneucc.org/2024AM as they become available.