Scott’s Column: Flourishing in Crisis

This post is the third in a series discussing the highlights of my ministry at First Central the last 15 years.

The final period of my pastorate begins with the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, five years ago this week.  The last in person Council meeting before the lockdown, we went through various scenarios and made contingency plans for the next month or so, none of which ended up mattering much when everything shut down anyway.

First we must acknowledge the wise and faithful leadership Laura Mitchell provided as Moderator during the worst years of the pandemic.  Her calm, steady temperament was exactly what we needed.

And we assembled an excellent task force to guide us, including the expertise of infectious disease physician Phil Smith and epidemiologist Bonnie Harmon.

Your Staff was already an effective, collaborative team, which paid off when suddenly almost every aspect of congregational life fell to our small team of people, all of whom had to quickly learn new skills and adapt to the situation.  And because any given week one of us might be in quarantine, we all had to learn each other’s work.  Support staff took on ministerial functions at times and vice versa.  And we became even closer than we had been.  We, and our families, were each other’s bubble.  For example, the Staff threw Sebastian his 5th birthday party, when he couldn’t be around any of his friends. 

That very first Sunday Katie Miller propped her laptop on a music stand, and she set up the first livestream.  We all had to relearn our jobs very quickly.  I have to say, preaching to a camera and no congregation was soul sucking and exhausting.

By the second Sunday, our Tech Team of Garret Higginbotham, Chad Mitchell, and Curt Cannon began to take over and our technology and product started to improve.  These three have for five years continued to devote countless hours of their time, at no pay, to stream our worship, improving the technology along the way.

We learned how to put on streaming worship and then hybrid worship.  We launched daily video devotionals online.  We made an effort in the early days of the lockdown to call every church family.  Katie began her weekly Wednesday night vespers.  I launched a zoom series on helping us to cope with uncertainty and wrote on the theological principles that should guide our decision-making, the spiritual resources of the Christian tradition that could help us with the lockdowns, and the philosophical and ethical issues that were raised.  Kerrie organized the effort to bake and deliver bread to folks in the most challenging professions.  Despite all that was challenging, uncertain, and emotionally draining, I also remember it as a time of beautiful, creative ministry.

Meanwhile, with the congregation not in the building, Ministry Support took the opportunity to get stuff accomplished.  We did some plaster patching and painting in the sanctuary, motion sensor lights were installed around the building, and most importantly the patio was resurfaced and the labyrinth repainted.  The patio became vital when we returned to church and could gather outside.

That summer was also the reckoning for racial justice after the murders of George Floyd and James Skurlock.  The congregation responded, joining in the mass movement, participating in protests, marches, and vigils. It was during one of these events that I was tear gassed and shot with a pepper ball.

We launched our own anti-racism task force that resulted in the adoption of our anti-racist commitment.

When we returned to in-person worship, it was with many protocols.  We learned to be flexible and to shut down in person events when infection rates spiked again.  So as folks became vaccinated and the waves of infection slowed, we began to return to more and more normal things, though it would take years before everything began to feel normal again. 

Though we did not lose anyone to Covid, through the lockdown year most of our folks in care centers died.  Doing funerals in 2020 was just weird, and many people didn’t even have one.  When we observed All Saints in the fall of 2021, we took the opportunity to focus on all the folks who had died for the last two years, especially those who had not had funerals.

As we began to return to a new normal, I used the Biblical story to reflect upon our experiences.  Our worship for a few years regularly drew upon the stories of exile and return.

And in our classes and ministry we started to focus more attention on skills people needed.  When we re-started the Wednesday night class, I told the Staff I wasn’t feeling a traditional Bible study like we’d done before.  Instead I wanted to teach Brene Brown’s book on the emotions, Atlas of the Heart.  They thought it a great idea and that people needed to process what they were feeling and learn again how to interact with one another.  Over the next few years we spent lots of education time on emotional awareness, resilience, spiritual practices, and interpersonal relations.  And in recent years our pastoral care has focused on addressing loneliness, adolescent mental health, workplace well-being, and parental stress.

From the summer of 2019 to the summer of 2021 I served as President of the Board of Directors of the Nebraska Conference of the United Church of Christ.  It was a strange time to serve in this role.  The new Tri-Conference Model had been launched in 2018, and we were still in the early days of making the new relationships work.  We had a new Conference Minister and new staff.  Covid hit, reducing our ability to do anything together.  There also ended up being much conflict in the Tri-Conference during my time in office and in my subsequent board service.  For a few years there I spent many hours a week on Conference issues.

What I’m most proud about accomplishing during that tenure is the Climate Change initiative of April 2021.  Jessica Palys, then our UCC pastor in Hastings, took the lead on a comprehensive initiative that involved us producing a booklet for all the churches with information, resources, liturgies, and tips for advocacy.  We put together a beautiful digital worship service with pastors standing in various landscapes around the state, focusing on the impacts of the climate change, especially after the natural disasters of 2019.  And we organized a tree planting effort by the churches around the state.

Also during my tenure as Conference Board President the Conference officially became Open & Affirming and Anti-Racist.  In my subsequent service on the Conference Board I chaired the committee that rewrote the Conference Bylaws.

2021 began a period of staff transitions, first with the retirement of Sara Sharpe after 18 years as our office administrator.  Then in 2023 Katie Miller and Katie Foster both left, and Liz Patterson and Lizz Brennfoerder started.  These transitions consumed a lot of my time and energy.

As church functions began to find a new normal post-Covid, we struggled with lay folks getting back in the routine of all their volunteer roles that make the church and its various ministries function.  So we engaged in various efforts of training, skill-building, and refocusing on our commitments.  Eventually we found our new groove.

In fall of 2021 we finally launched the To Be More Capital Campaign and raised 50% more than anticipated and almost double what our initial case study had suggested we might raise.  A great success!

Over the last few years we’ve seen various capital campaign projects come to completion and others are in process right now.  Be reminded that in our long-range plan the building needs were to be in service to the ministry ideas, so we still have the new ministry efforts to work on, including community partnerships, as we complete the building work.

In the Spring of 22, Deb Kirwan, Susan Fortina, and I took a trip to New England to explore the historical and theological routes of our denomination.  We visited Plymouth and the graves of my Mayflower passenger ancestors, walked the Freedom Trail in Boston, had a fun visit to the Congregational Archives, and worshiped with the church in Norfolk, Connecticut where our founding pastor from the 1850’s had grown up.

In 2022 I took my second sabbatical and concentrated my study on climate change resilience, focusing on what we need to understand as congregations facing the existential crisis of our times.  Which had led to an on-going interest in the changing nature of church in a period of polycrisis, about which I wrote an in-depth report in December 2023 and published a series of newsletter articles in January 2024.

In March 2023 we celebrated the 101st anniversary of First Central Congregational Church worshiping in this building at 36th and Harney.  The previous autumn we had shown the building off as part of the Blackstone Neighborhood Historical Tour.

Our public witness has adapted to the changing political situation.  In 2023 we expended much effort in an attempt to prevent the passage of anti-trans and anti-abortion legislation.  We failed to block those, and I was exhausted by the effort.  But these efforts resulted in the formation of new interfaith networks and partnerships that are ongoing.

These last years have also witnessed generational change, as many people who were longtime pillars of the church have moved into care centers, moved to be closer to kids, experienced significant illness, or have died.

In 2019 I served as a counselor at Faith and Fine Arts Camp at Kamp Kaleo and took personal retreats there in 2020 and 2021 when I needed to get away in the midst of all the Covid stuff.  I fell in love with the possibilities for our state church campground, which I really think of as the UCC State Park.  This led to my election to the Kaleo on the River Board of Directors.  The last few years I’ve been to camp a number of times for work days, fundraisers, meetings, and to take kids to camp.

In 2024 we did another review of bylaws and policies and have begun making needed updates.  At the same time, Lizz was updating many of our office systems and processes–adopting new software, redesigning templates, and improving the function of our database.

The most exciting development in these years has been our robust growth in children and young families.  These efforts began in 2022 when we refreshed and updated our Sunday school, including relocating the children’s education to the third floor, and have continued with expanded programming and fun new intergenerational events.  Liz has done a phenomenal job leading these efforts with a great team of educators.  This winter we have celebrated 10 baptisms, the most visible sign of our vitality and growth.

And we are currently running a fundraising drive to complete the vision of installing a new elevator, a long delayed project.  I hope we can complete the fundraising and launch the project before my departure.

I believe First Central in 2025 is at one of its high points.