Monthly Archives: May 2021

Do you have a good photo of your church building? Or do you have a keen photographer in your congregation?

The URC is publishing a calendar of church buildings for 2022 to give a flavour of the length and breadth of the denomination in its anniversary year.

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Join Churches Together in England on 25 May 2021 for Candle of Justice: a moment of action – commemorating the first anniversary of George Floyd’s murder.

The Candle of Justice will be a moment to light a candle, pray for racial justice and commit to taking personal and institutional action to tackle racial injustice in our society and our churches.

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A member of Vicars Cross URC, in the United Reformed Church’s Mersey Synod, has spent the lockdown raising hundreds of pounds for charity.

Marje Robinson kept active by taking walks around her local area but increased her distance after spotting Water Aid’s ‘Walk for Water’ charity challenge on Facebook which encouraged people to walk four, eight or 12k a day.

Marje signed up for the 4k challenge, walked each day of March, and raised more than £850 for the charity to help make clean water normal for everyone, everywhere.

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The following prayer was written by Diana Paulding from the context of the participants of the URC’s educational visit to Israel and Palestine in 2019.

It has been adapted for possible use in collective worship. Please feel free to use and share it. 

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The United Reformed Church has joined a coalition of faith groups and leaders in writing to Priti Patel, the Home Secretary, to urge her to rethink the government’s proposed New Plan for Immigration, which they say “lacks humanity and respect for human dignity.”

Signatories include the Jesuit Refugee Service, Caritas, Welcome Churches, the Salvation Army, Quaker Asylum and Refugee Network, UK Welcomes Refugees, the Baptist Union of Great Britain, the United Free Church of Scotland and many others.

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The next session in the United Reformed Church (URC’s) Black History Monthly initiative takes place on 17 May from 7.30-8.30pm.

This month’s theme is ‘Black Voices Speak Out’ and a selection of poems by Black writers through the ages – from slavery to the present day – will be reflected on. The session promises to be poignant, challenging, inspiring, humorous.

Due to copyright restrictions, the materials for this session cannot be posted. If you would like to see the poems in advance, please email Veronica Daniel, Administrator for Global and Intercultural Ministries, or simply turn up, listen, reflect, and respond. 

To whet your appetites, below is a poem written by Karen Campbell, the URC’s Secretary for Global and Intercultural Ministries, entitled ‘Black’:

Black

If the night sky wasn’t inky

Could the stars shine so bright?

And if there wasn’t darkness,

Tell me, how could light be light?

No dark depths of earth –

How would the flora grow?

Black is essential, don’t you know.

You tell me black is no good –

The shade of evil, shade of sin;

How do I then make sense

Of the blackness of my skin?

The skin I didn’t choose

No more than you could choose your own;

The skin that I was gifted –

Only skin I’ve ever known.

Black is what I am; it’s who I am;

It is my pride.

It’s the strength on which I stand –

Where I refuse to be denied.

Black speaks of where I’m going –

How the world relates to me;

Black speaks of where I’ve come from –

Heritage and history.

But it’s hard not to internalise

The message all around –

Before a word is spoken

That in Black offence is found;

Explicit or implied.

Yet from your view you cannot see

The shackles to be broken

Until Black lives full and free.

© Karen Campbell 2019

Black History Monthly has been running since February 2021. The sessions have included deep reflections and honest conversations spurred by 13th – a documentary film by Ava DuVernay, ‘The Kairos Document: Challenge to the Church – A Theological Comment on the Political Crisis in South Africa’, and Elizabeth Heyrick’s 1824 anti-slavery pamphlet, ‘Immediate, not Gradual Abolition’. 

Black History Monthly is for everyone in the URC and is just one response to the commitment to journey from being ‘not racist’ to actively ‘anti-racist’, adopted by Mission Council in November 2020. 

For more details, visit the URC’s Legacies of Slavery webpage.  

_{Image: Yasin Yusuf/Unsplash
Published: 11 May 2021}

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A 145-year-old time capsule, containing ten coins and a rolled-up newspaper, has been discovered in the foundations of a United Reformed Church (URC) primary school.

As reported on BBC News, the glass jar was found “by complete accident” while workers renovated the chapel at Barrow URC Primary School in Clitheroe, Lancashire, built in 1876.

The artefact had been placed inside one of the chapel’s foundation stones.

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The United Reformed Church (URC) is saddened by the news that this year’s Greenbelt Festival has been cancelled.

Greenbelt had many complex issues to wrestle with in deciding how to plan and deliver the festival and keep people safe.

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The United Reformed Church General Assembly Moderators, the Revd Clare Downing and Mr Peter Pay, joined 143 faith leaders across the world in calling for the production and distribution of enough Covid vaccines for the entire global population.

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