2005 - 2006 Annual Reports

Commissioned Minister of Christian Education

As a Commissioned Minister of Christian Education in the United Church of Christ, I am required to have a calling body in order to retain my ecclesiastical standing as Commissioned Minister.  First Parish Church has served as my calling body since May of 2004.

This means that this congregation oversees the ministry that I do in Christian education throughout the United Church of Christ, as well as any teaching, consulting, and resourcing I am asked to provide here at this church.  The other areas I serve are the NH Conference (consultant in Christian education for New Hampshire UCC churches) and the national United Church of Christ (editor of the Partners in Education Newsletter) and The Education Connection, the newsletter of the Association of United Church Educators.  If you’d like to see one of the newsletters, you can view recent issues of The Education Connection at www.auce-educators.org/Newsletter.htm.

I report quarterly to a small committee that represents the pastors, the Diaconate, and the Board of Christian Education -- Pastor Alice, Jane Dunn, and Jane Mallinson.  Annually I report to the Rockingham Association Committee on Church and Ministry.  All this reporting assures that I am representing the United Church of Christ in ways that affirm ministry in the name of Jesus Christ.

This past year I have traveled to Cleveland, Chicago, upstate New York, and Cape Cod representing the Association of United Church Educators and gathering information about how that organization can continue to support and advocate for UCC educators.  Over the summer, I served on staff at Horton Center, our NH Conference Outdoor Ministries site in the White Mountains, and plan to do so again this summer.  Here at First Parish, I led “Bible 101” for four weeks in February. 

As God continues to call me to ministry in Christian education in new and exciting ways, it is comforting to know that I am grounded here with you in the church that I have called home for the past twenty years.

Respectfully submitted,
Debbie Gline Allen