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A Joyful Invitation to an Ecclesiastical Council for Crossroads Church, Loveland

The Rocky Mountain Conference is thrilled to announce a momentous and joyous occasion in our shared life of faith: Crossroads Church in Loveland is preparing to take the final step toward becoming a full member of the United Church of Christ. An Ecclesiastical Council will be held on Sunday April 27 at 4:00 PM (MT) via Zoom. We warmly invite authorized ministers and delegates from across the Conference to attend, bear witness, and offer your presence as a sign of our shared covenant. Registration for this event can be found here. 

As is often true at Ecclesiastical Councils for Members in Discernment, for many of you this may be your first encounter with Crossroads Church. The purpose of this sacred gathering is to give delegates and clergy of this conference an opportunity to listen to their story, ask questions about their journey, bear witness to the work of the Spirit among us, and vote to welcome them officially into the denomination. 

While Crossroads may be new to many of us, we are not new to Crossroads. They began their journey a few years ago as they began to discern a need to find a denomination that aligned more fully with their values. You can read more about their journey to the UCC here. 

With the support of the Conference and neighboring UCC congregations, Crossroads engaged in a season of intentional exploration—learning about UCC theology, values, and history; reflecting on their own identity and mission; and prayerfully considering how their calling aligns with the wider movement of the UCC.

They’ve participated in Conference gatherings, built relationships with UCC churches, and taken concrete steps to live into the marks of a UCC congregation. Their leadership and congregation have shown remarkable openness, curiosity, and commitment throughout this process, 

Your participation is a powerful expression of welcome and solidarity. This is an opportunity to celebrate new relationships, affirm the work of the Spirit among us, and surround Crossroads Church with the love and support of the wider UCC family. 

This is also an opportunity for us to live into our identity as a “United and Uniting Church” celebrating the gift of our diverse and varied expressions as the church, bound together not by uniformity but through our shared commitment to love, justice and the unity we embody through Christ. To be United and Uniting is to declare our commitment to further union, continuing to grow, welcome and weave new threads into the fabric of our collective life. Welcoming Crossroads Church into covenant is an act of unity and spiritual communion, an expression of our ongoing call to be the Church together.