Brecksville

Our Church’s Wider Mission (OCWM) and Christian Education will be co-sponsoring the next installment of the Social Justice Book Club!  The first meeting for the new book will be on Thursday, January 14^th, from 7:00-8:00 PM in the BUCC “Zoom Room”. It will continue for the next several Thursdays.

We will be starting Love is the Way: Holding on to Hope in Troubling Times, by Bishop Michael Curry. You may purchase a copy here or anywhere books are sold!  For our first meeting, please have read the introduction and first chapter. 

We will create a reading schedule for the remainder of the book, and assign weekly discussion leaders at our first meeting.  Even if you haven’t had time to read, please feel free to join in and listen to the discussion – we’d love to have enough folks involved to need breakout rooms! If you have any questions, please feel free to contact Kate Klonowski at keightykay@gmail.com or 216-534-3498.

Our final congregational meeting for 2020 will be held on Sunday, December 27th at 11:00, immediately following the Sunday service. The purpose of the meeting is to confirm the proposed 2021 slate of officers, and to present the tentative 2021 budget.
If you attend the December 27th service, please stay logged into Zoom afterwards to participate in the meeting. If you do not attend the service, you may join the meeting at 11:00 via our Zoom link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/4780705901

Traditionally at BUCC, we have shared our Christmas Collection with the pension fund for retired UCC clergy. These “shepherds” helped us find the Christ child over their many years of service. Even though we cannot gather together this year, as we have in the past, we do not want to forget them.

Your donations to this fund provide direct financial assistance to individual UCC clergy and lay church employees, not to programs or institutions. Our retired clergy and lay employees rely on monthly pension supplementation (especially lower income retirees). Your donation will meet such basic needs as food, utilities, health premium supplementation, help covering prescriptions, and basic living expenses. Also, emergency grants for active and retired UCC clergy and lay employees are provided, to assist in covering unexpected costs such as large medical expenses or home damage resulting from natural disasters. Please be generous, as these funds are critical for a sustainable quality of life for these Veterans of the Cross.

You can go to: http://www.christmasfund.org in order to make a donation. Thank you.

We are currently holding a book discussion on White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism by Robin DiAngelo. When we are done, many of us will be donating our copies to the Little Free Library.

Anyone is welcome to join us on Thursday nights at 7:00 pm. Join us on Zoom

Here are the final week’s discussion questions, if you want to prepare:

Where do we go from here?

1. The author states that it isn’t enough for white people to be nice and that, in fact, racisms perpetuation depends on people being “nice.” How does “niceness” support the status quo?
2. How would you respond to a white person who said “you just want me to feel bad and guilty about something that I ha nothing to do with?”
3. What parts of the book yielded the most surprising or unsettling aspects of white fragility to you? Did these revelations change your perspective in any way (and, if so, how)?
4. Do you feel that this book adequately addressed the questions or perceptions you had or have about race relations in the United States? Why or why not?
5. What kinds of changes do you think you will make in your life as a result of reading this book? Are there some that seem pointless or daunting? Is the way more clear or more cloudy?
6. What commitment should we make as a faith community to address issues of anti-racism?

Questions from other weeks:

Several members of our church participated in the Black Lives Matter demonstration in May, 2020. Since then our congregation has been looking for more ways to peacefully advance discussion and awareness on this complicated topic. A Brecksville resident sought us out as a place to install a Little Free Library focused on racism and social justice issues. We agreed to let her install it on our grounds.

On Saturday, September 26, 2020 at 2:00 PM, we dedicated the library recently installed here.

You can view the remarks at the dedication on Facebook by clicking here.

You can “follow” the Little Free Library on Instagram.

If you wish to donate books, please see this Wish List on Amazon.

John Lewis, US Congressman and brave civil rights activist was laid to rest on July 30, 2020.

Brecksville UCC joined many churches throughout Atlanta and the country to ring our bells for 80 seconds. We did so to honor his 80 years of life, and as he put it “getting into good trouble”. See the video below.

Click here to learn more.

Additional information posted this morning by the organizer, Sam Barchet:

Hello everyone! A few important reminders about Tuesday’s event:

 Brecksville United Church of Christ joins with our parent organization, the United Church of Christ, in deploring the systemic violence against African Americans in contemporary America. We call on all levels of government and Law Enforcement to consult with African American leadership to build a way forward together, so that the United States’ promise of equal justice for all may be fulfilled.