Conference News

Join us for Feb Camp at Monte Toyon! 

Come see old friends, make new ones, worship and play in a great camp location!

Fun begins at 1PM on Saturday, February 16 and continues through Monday morning to 11AM - 48 hours of hilarity, joy and Campy-ness!

We will play, worship, explore, hike and have fun together!

All HIgh Schoolers (grades 9-12) and their youth advisors/pastors are invited.

If you have never been to an NCNC youth retreat before, this is the one to try for the first time.read more...

What began as a simple donation with basic instructions turned into one of the largest donations by a faith-based organization that one California food bank has ever received. 

The facts are chilling. Nearly 1 in 4 children in California are now living in poverty according to the recent U.S. census bureau. As poverty figures for the country have increased tremendously adding to the gap between rich and poor, California’s numbers are  more dire than the national average, with nearly 6 million people now living in poverty.

This bad news inspired the Rev. Laurie Manning and the justice-seeking congregation at Skyline Community UCC in Oakland, Calif., to take aggressive action when they received a donation of $25,000. The donation came with the simple instructions "to give to an organization that makes a difference in the local community."

"We’re a little church and I’m a little pastor in the big city of Oakland," said Manning. "We want to make a big difference in Alameda County, especially now, in this tough economy where 1 in 6 people don’t have enough money to buy healthy food, especially families with children and the elderly on fixed incomes … increasingly the images of the long food lines from the Great Depression are returning."read more...

By Rev. Laura Rose

A local pastor’s reflections from the Oakland encampment

Fourteen members of the Interfaith Tent @ Oakland locked arms in front of the Tent and were arrested early Monday morning as the police raided the encampment.  It is not surprising that our words and actions have been reduced to a few sound bites and fleeting images by the mainstream media, but there is a deeper, better story to be told.

Our Interfaith Tent is a big tent – spatially and spiritually.  The tent has been a sacred space of solace at the encampment, but it has also provided a sacred canopy for an interfaith coalition of Indigenous Elders, Buddhists, Christians, Muslims and Jews in solidarity with the Occupy Movement, locally and globally.

As someone who pastors a local church less than four miles from the Oakland encampment, I am keenly aware of how critical it is that we challenge the people in our faith communities to engage in soul searching dialogues that force us not only to read between the lines and listen beyond the partisan sound bites but also to grapple face to face with what it means to be the 99% in all its complexity and diversity.  So right after our worship service on Sunday morning, just hours before the raid on the Oakland encampment, twenty five of us gathered around the board room table at First Congregational UCC in Alameda, Calif., including two people who would later be arrested.read more...