Brecksville

We’re excited to announce our next book in the Social Justice Book Club series Dear America Notes of an Undocumented Citizen by Jose Antonio Vargas.

We will begin on Thursday, April 8 at 7 00 pm, on the BUCC zoom. Skipping 4/15, we will continue on Thursdays until done.

It is written in a narrative, autobiographical style. Warning you may have a hard time putting it down!

Feel free to direct any questions to Kate Klonowski at 216 534 3498 or email keightykay@gmail com

All are very welcome!

The people who pickup the paper from our recycle bin in the parking lot, have offered to pay double for anything they collect during that week.
So let’s make sure we fill up the bin during that week:

• Save your scraps & boxes
• Contact your friends & family

Questions? Contact Jim Duffy 216-644-2784 or jmorganduffy@gmail.com

The cooking is done and the meals served and delivered!

Brecksville United Church of Christ teamed up with culinary arts students at Cuyahoga Community College for a Friday Fish Meal. They prepared over 300 individual meals which we served as a hot, take out lunches as well as 4-pack take-home and reheat packages. We had orders from 37 people.

The best news is that we were able to donate over meals for over 40 families to St. Augustine Hunger Center in Tremont. We also shared our excess ingredients, which they will use in future meals.

Thank you to all who: promoted our event, planned & ordered supplies, prepared meals, answered the phones, ran meals out to the parking lot, delivered donated food, cleaned up, and most of all purchased meals!

See the pictures, below of our exciting, fun and rewarding day:

So sorry, the order deadline has passed. If you have already ordered, we thank you and can’t wait to see you next week when you pickup up your meals.

Brecksville United Church of Christ has teamed up with culinary arts students at Cuyahoga Community College for a Friday Fish Meal. Interested in donating a meal to someone in need? Read to the end of this note.

Offering Pollack (fried with a panko crust or baked) the choices are:

• Lunch (Curbside Pickup 11:00 to 1:00):
  • Hot Fish Lunch – Baked $15.00
  • Hot Fish Lunch – Fried $15.00
  • Take-Home and Reheat package (serves 4) – Baked $50.00
  • Take-Home and Reheat package (serves 4) – Fried $50.00
• Dinner (Curbside Pickup 4:00 to 6:00):
  • Take-Home and Reheat Packages only

All include Coleslaw, Mashed Potatoes, Cornbread Muffin, Tartar Sauce and Lemon Wedge).

Deadline for orders is: Friday, February 26, 2021 at Noon.

Meals for those in need:

If you would like to help the mission of St. Augustine’s Hunger Center in Tremont, you can select one or more “Donation Meals” when ordering tickets. We will prepare and deliver your donated meals to St. Augustine’s for distribution, as part of the several hundred meals they serve daily.

During Lent this year, Pastor Allan Lane is reading Lent of Liberation by Cheri L. Mills. (ISBN-13 : 978-0664266837). You may find it valuable, as well.

Our final congregational meeting for 2020 will be held on Sunday, February 7th at 11:00, immediately following the Sunday service. The purpose of the meeting is to approve the 2021 budget.
If you attend the February 7th 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

Our Church’s Wider Mission (OCWM) and Christian Education is co-sponsoring the next installment of the Social Justice Book Club!  Starting Thursday, January 14^th, from 7:00-8:00 PM in the BUCC “Zoom Room”, it will continue for the next several Thursdays at the same time.

We will be discussing 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!  

Each chapter addresses a common question Bishop Curry has been asked by people he has met during his travels:

1. What is love?
2. How do I find God’s love?
3. How do I find the energy to keep loving when the world seems to be going the other way?
4. Can love really change the world?
5. Won’t loving everybody make me a doormat?
6. I’m just a regular person, so how can my love have an impact?
7. I’m told to love my neighbor, but who is my neighbor?
8. What if loves reveals me to be a hypocrite?
9. Do I have to love even my enemy?
10. How can love overcome what divides us and move us forward together?
11. Does love mean avoiding politics?
12. How can love make “E pluribus Unum” real in America without erasing anybody?

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: