As many of you know, this year’s Annual Meeting of the South Central Conference will be hosted by the Brazos Association on Friday to Sunday, June 5-7, 2009 at Huston- Tillotson University in Austin. A planning committee chaired by Anne Wehrly of Friends Congregational in College Station is in place working to plan an uplifting and informative gathering. The theme this year is the UCC and Disciples of Christ shared global missions work, with speakers and several workshop leaders coming from Global Ministries to tell us about UCC sponsored work being done around the world. Thanks to locally based Global Ministries representative David Owen, several of our committee members have been learning about the outstanding work representing our church around the world. We have been learning, as well, about the exciting programs Global Ministries has for churches to become more closely engaged with this work. We are excited, too, at the prospect of meeting at Huston-Tillotson. This university has a long and historic affiliation with the United Church of Christ and the United Methodist Church. It was formed by a 1952 merger of Tillotson College, which was founded by the American Missionary Association of the Congregational Church and opened in 1881, and Samuel Huston College, which opened in 1900 after a joint agreement by the Freedmens’ Aid Society and the Methodist Episcopal Church. Tillotson College was one of nine predominantly African-American colleges founded by the AMA in the effort to make a college education available to African Americans in the South after the slaves were freed.

(ou can read about the magnificent history of the AMA in the abolition movement and after the Civil War at

http://www.ucc.org/about-us/hidden-histories/blacks-and-the-american.html

Our conference has remained connected to Huston-Tillotson in a number of ways in addition to the official UCC ties. Joseph McMillan, member of Congregational Church of Austin, is a past president of the University, and several UCC members have served on the Board of Trustees, including current Board members Frances Alford and Don Brown.

If you have any questions about the upcoming Annual Meeting, please address them to me, Anne Wehrly at awehrly@suddenlink.net.