Join us on the beautiful Heidelberg campus in Tiffin, Ohio as we continue Connecting Vital Ministry Networks. Our focus will be on helping clergy and lay leaders create and nurture vital congregations and their ministries.

In addition, we are once again encouraging affinity groups and networks of folks with a common calling to plan a gathering or event during the Conference Annual Gathering.  We will work with group leaders to provide time and space for interested folks to get together to meet or get re-acquainted, share interests, learn something new or make plans for the future. 

If you would like to sponsor an event or meeting, let us know.  We welcome the opportunity to help connect your group with others who share your interest.

In addition, we anticipate that many of the groups who met at the Annual Gathering in 2009 will do so again in 2010.  And we encourage any other group interested in holding an event to be in touch with us soon.

The Goist Family string quartet, members of Immanuel St. Bernard UCC, Cincinnati, and a favorite of 2009 Annual Gathering participants, will be with us again in 2010 to provide beautiful music for worship.

Stephen, Phillip, Michael and David Goist during 2009 closing worship.

Updates will be posted here and included in Connections, the Conference monthly newsletter, as well as special mailings.

Tentative Schedule

Photo gallery from 2009 Annual Gathering

Leaders

Rev. Geoffrey Black, United Church of Christ General Minister and President, will preach at our main worship service and will lead an affinity group session. 

Rev. Martha Grace Reese is a consultant and researcher specializing in faith, faith sharing and congregational transformation in mainline congregations.  She is an ordained pastor who serves as President of GraceNet,Inc. and Director of the Unbinding the Gospel Project, a new grant project funded by the Lilly Endowment. Reese is author of the best-selling Unbinding the Gospel: Real Life Evangelism (Chalice Press, 2nd ed. November, 2008) and the Unbinding the Gospel Series.

Dr. Marian R. Plant is associate professor and Schauffler Chair of Christian Education at Defiance College and is the author of Faith Formation in Vital Congregations (Pilgrim Press, 2009). The book provides a framework for ordained or lay pastors; professional church educators; family life coordinators; educational ministry volunteers; and committee, task force, or board members to provide strategies for preparing the way forward in adult Christian formation.

Faith Formation in Vital Congregations is part of the Congregational Vitality series providing local churches with tools to revitalize and prepare themselves for ministry in the 21st century.