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[Church in Wales] Saint Deiniol’s Cathedral in Bangor, Wales, has been awarded “The Freedom of the City of Bangor,” the highest honor the city council can bestow, in recognition of its substantial contributions to the community throughout its long history. The award comes as the city celebrates its 1500th anniversary in 2025. In a unanimous decision during a recent meeting, Bangor City Council voted  to honor the cathedral with the civic award, making it the first organization to receive this recognition in over a decade. Previous recipients include the British Broadcasting Corporation, RAF Valley, and David Lloyd George, who was British prime minster during World War I. The award acknowledges the cathedral’s historical significance and ongoing role in Bangor’s cultural and spiritual life as the city approaches this momentous milestone. Founded by Saint Deiniol in 525 AD, Bangor is recognized as Wales’ oldest city in recorded history.

On March 11, 2020, the World Health Organization officially declared Covid-19 a global pandemic. Within days, offices, schools and churches stopped meeting in-person and began scrambling to adapt to a new way of life — masking, social distancing, and meeting…

The post Five years later: How did the Covid-19 pandemic impact ministry? appeared first on United Church of Christ.

[Office of the Archbishop of York] Archbishop of York Stephen Cottrell began his Lord’s Prayer tour across northern England with a service of choral evensong at York Minster on March 7. The tour will visit cathedrals and churches, exploring the words of the Lord’s Prayer through teaching, reflection and music. At the heart of the archbishop’s tour is a simple but powerful invitation: to pray the Lord’s Prayer by heart and align our lives with God’s will. This call is beautifully echoed in the prayer’s central plea, ‘Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.’ Using the metaphor of music, Cottrell’s sermon at the evensong service encouraged people to think of God’s will as the single perfect note that resonates throughout the universe — a note to which our lives can be tuned. Through prayer, we learn to hear this note, bringing harmony to our hearts and aligning with God’s purpose for the world. The service at York Minster also featured a musical performance of a new setting of the Lord’s Prayer, composed by Lucy Walker. Sung by the choir of York Minster, the piece highlighted how the Lord’s Prayer continues to resonate with people today. The tour and newly commissioned music are part of “Faith in the North,” which has been developed to encourage prayer, storytelling and church planting, inspired by the northern Saints such as Hild, Cuthbert, Bede and Paulinus. The goal is to deepen connections with the Christian faith and renew the church’s mission to share God’s love with all. Free resources are available for schools and churches to help explore this.

[Episcopal News Service] Episcopal priest and poet the Rev. Spencer Reece last week was awarded the John Updike Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. The award, which comes with a prize of $20,000, is given every two years to recognize a midcareer writer whose contributions to American literature have demonstrated consistent excellence. It was established by Updike’s widow, Martha. Reece is the vicar of St. Paul’s in Wickford, Rhode Island, where he has served since late 2022. The American Academy of Arts and Letters is a 300-member honor society whose goal is to “foster, assist and sustain excellence” in American literature, music and art. It is congressionally chartered, and is headquartered in New York. Reece told Episcopal News Service that when he got the email on March 6 telling him of the award, it came as a shock. “I kind of couldn’t believe it for a day or two,” he said. But, he added, “Being involved in a community of writers means a lot to me.” This isn’t the only award Reece has received for his work. His first book of poems, “The Clerk’s Tale,” written in 2004 when he was 41, received the Bread Loaf Writers Conference Bakeless Poetry Prize. Many of the poems draw on his previous career as an assistant manager for Brooks Brothers. After the book was published, The New Yorker devoted an entire page to its opening poem, which later served as the basis for a 2010 film by actor and director James Franco that debuted at a section of the Cannes Film Festival. He has written two other books of poetry – “The Road to Emmaus” in 2013, which was a longlist nominee for the National Book Award, and “Acts” in 2024. In addition to writing his own poetry, in 2017 he edited an anthology of poems, “Counting Time Like People Count Stars,” written by girls at Our Little Roses, an Episcopal-affiliated orphanage in San Pedro Sula, Honduras, where Reece taught poetry for two years. It was the basis for the documentary “Voices Beyond the Wall: 12 Love Poems from the Murder Capital of the World.” In 2021 he published two works – a book of watercolors, “All the Beauty Still Left: A Poet’s Painted Book of Hours,” and a memoir, “The Secret Gospel of Mark.” He has received a variety of other honors, including fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts, grants from the Fulbright Foundation and the Minnesota State Arts Council, a Witter Bynner fellowship from the Library of Congress, the Amy Lowell Poetry Traveling Scholarship, and a Whiting Writers’ Award. Reece was ordained a priest in 2011 and has served in Spain and New York City in addition to his work in Honduras and Rhode Island. When asked about overlap in his roles as priest and poet, he said that while poetry and sermon preparation are done mostly in isolation, sermons are different in that they appear in the public setting of worship. But in both instances, they are about how those words interact with their audience. He also said that in recent years he has found his sermons and the research he does in writing them spilling over more into his poems. Calling poetry his “great passion and great love,” Reece said that after the initial recognition that came his way two decades ago, he had begun to feel that the doors to the literary world had mostly closed to him. Getting word of the John Updike award left him not only surprised but “encouraged about my writing life.” As if to validate that encouragement, he learned on March 10 that The New Yorker had picked up one of his poems – 21 years after his first appearance in the magazine and 10 years after it printed “My Great Grandmother’s Bible,” which also was included in the newly released “A Century of Poetry in The New Yorker.” — Melodie Woerman is an Episcopal News Service freelance reporter based in Kansas.

Re-entering the room at the March 2025 UCC Board Meeting in Cleveland to a standing ovation, smiles, and immense joy, the Rev. Shari Prestemon, current Acting Associate General Minister and Co-executive of Global Ministries was nominated by the Board to…

The post Rev. Shari Prestemon nominated to serve as UCC’s Associate General Minister and Co-Executive, Global Ministries for Love of Neighbor Ministries appeared first on United Church of Christ.

The search committee for the role of Associate General Minister for Love of Church did not identify a candidate to recommend to the United Church of Christ Board during their March 6-8 meetings in Cleveland. The Love of Church Search…

The post No candidate identified: Associate General Minister for Love of Church search to relaunch after General Synod 35 appeared first on United Church of Christ.

Julia Gaughan, chair of the United Church of Christ Board, is an authorized minister serving Peace United Church of Christ in Alma, Kansas, and a member-in-discernment with Plymouth Congregational UCC in Lawrence, Kansas. She has written the following as her most recent report from the…

The post Report to the church from the UCC Board: March 2025 appeared first on United Church of Christ.

As the new government reimagines the NHS and increases focus on health services in the community, churches have a unique opportunity to support social prescribing.

Calvin Birnie explores the life and legacy of Saint Patrick and what we might learn from him about mission today.

Shige Sakurai (they/them)

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In this quick guide, Rev. Shige Sakurai uses elemental symbolism to represent each area of focus designed to facilitate long-term change.