September 28-30 2007

The mission of the Commission for Community Life is to focus on areas of ministry relating to one another serving the needs of local churches, Conference organizations and programming at Conference owned facilities. Our commission is composed of 15 members, one from each association, plus 5 at-large members to be elected at the Annual Meeting of the conference. For the past year, Herbert Oliver has been elected chairperson of our commission. Our commission is responsible for Outdoor ministries committee, Small Church Mission Team, Support Staff Network, Rockcraft Committee, Youth Ministries Teams, clergy Spouse Network, and Women of the Maine Conference.

With a number of changes in membership we spent some time getting acquainted with our responsibilities and sorting through our tasks. This year we have tried hard to have an individual from our committee be a liaison with each group we are responsible. For the report this year I am going to highlight some of the activities that have been reported to us as well as activities that we have generated for the conference.

Support Staff Network committee’s purpose is to help bring about dignity, respect and fair compensation for all support staff of the Maine Conference United Church of Christ churches. This year they held a very successful meeting discussing their future. A vote was taken to stop having the partners in Ministry Day in the Spring but still have a retreat the third Tuesday/Wednesday of October each year at Rockcraft for support staff. The retreat will be used to educate and renew them so they can do a better ministry of our churches. The evaluations of the retreat will be use to help determine the theme.

Small Church Ministry Team partnered with the church leaders convocation committee to get John Westerhoff as a speaker at the spring two day meeting March 23 and 24 held in Augusta at the First Congregation Church. This event was very well attended and the committees are planning to work together again to provide a program that will enlighten us all. In addition to this large task the committee continues to review grants and provide monies to churches that qualify. This year each church will be filling out the Hartford Seminary Parish Profile which will aid the facilitator in assessing areas of concern in the life of the church. Each church will also be assigned a liaison from the small church team who will be with them for the five year program. Once the profile is completed each church will have educational programs geared toward their needs. They feel this will made the parish of Promises stronger.

Rockcraft Committee with Earl Simpson as their chair worked hard with our committee to get mailings out to schools, United Way organizations and other to make them away of the Rockcraft facilities so they might rent it for their group meetings. This committee has been working hard to market the property so that it will have a larger use especially during the week.

Youth Ministries Teams have been activity again this year. They held their fall meeting at Pilgrim Lodge and their mid-winter meeting in Saco. The summer meeting was held at Rockcraft. As of the writing of this report, they are still looking for two (female) advisors one of whom should be a clergy in good standing. The regional youth event that was going to be held in Maine had to be cancelled and the alternative event was held at Pilgrim Lodge with ½ of the people who were going to attend attending. However a wonderful time was had by all.

Clergy Spouse Network held their retreat at Living Waters Retreat Center in Winslow on May 4-6 with Rev. Dan Johnson as their speaker. They used as a springboard an article from Newsweek discussing the emerging role of the clergy partner and the perception of others of that role. There were about 15 people present and a great discussion was had as well as wonderful fellowship.

Women of the Maine Conference even though they have not had meetings are still a part of our responsibility since we are paying dues to the UCC Women Leaders of New England so they can the New England Women’s Celebration that is held every 4 years. The planning board held their meeting in Ct. in May to determine where the 2010 celebration would be held. As of this writing I have not heard. Maybe someone can tell us at Annual meeting.

Commission Items

Along with Spiritual Life commission we organized the Learning to Listen workshops around the state. There were 7 different sites and seven different facilitators that made for wonderful dialog and fellowship. It was felt that since these were so successful we should use this idea to help with communications. Our commission has organized 15 sites for town meetings where we will discuss the assets of the conference. We will have a power point of the three properties and a set of questions for all to address. These meetings will be held between September and December 2007. Notes from each meeting will be posted on the website so everyone will be aware of what took place at the respective sites. The results will be reported to the coordinating council and from there some recommendations will be made to the membership at an annual meeting in the future.

Thank You: Rev. June Boutwell we want to thank you for your wonderful leadership for the past 2 years. You have been a great asset to our group and to the conference in general. We wish you well in your new endeavors. We would also like to thank Rev. David Gaewski, Conference Minister, Mark Schussler, Business Manager and Rev. Davis Ray for there assistance to our committee. We welcome Rev. Susan Craig to our conference and look forward to working with her as she joins our staff.

Herb Oliver, Chairperson