Dear Beloved Community,

The HCC Search Committee is grateful to report that we would like to welcome Reverend Donald Morgan to become our half-time settled pastor. 

Don’s Candidating Sermon, followed by an all church meeting and vote, will be on Sunday, June 9, 2019 at 10:00 AM. 

Don is currently pastor of a UCC church in Red Oak Iowa. Here is what he says about his call to ministry in his UCC Profile:

I like many, was brought up in a small rural church with its roots in the Christian side of the Congregational/Christian church. In that tradition we practiced adult or of age baptism so at the age of 9 I was baptized and became a member of the church. However, it was not until the age of 15 that I had, what some would call, the Saul type conversion experience, at the same time I became affiliated with a nondenominational ministry whose founder and pastor was a woman named Cora Smith. I give credit to her and her ministry for my early spiritual development. At the age of 16 I felt the inner press to be more than what we are all called to be and that is witnesses to the gospel of Christ but to proclaim, to minister the gospel and I accepted that call. I became pastor of my first church at the age of 20, at the age of 30 I felt again a strong press to reconnect with the United Church of Christ so I entered seminary and was called to my first UCC congregation and have been a devoted, committed UCC pastor ever since.

  I am passionate about preaching and about being with and serving God’s people. I am gay and I have been gay since before I knew what being gay was and being black and gay was a double whammy perhaps all over but particularly in the small town and community in the south where I grew up. Needless to say, the community and the church fostered a very negative self-image within me and it caused me to struggle with my sexuality. I grew up hearing all of the condemning sermons and even after I was compelled into the ministry I struggled and did not understand how God could use me in ministry and condemn me at the same time. It was not until I was in my early twenties that I gained a positive sense of self. I will share with you how God brought that about: I was on my way home from a church service one Friday night very late, a service where I had heard yet another condemning sermon and it was all I could take and on the way home that night I had to cross a very well know bridge in NC and as I drove I was in tears and crying out to God and I said that if God did not do something before I got to that bridge I was going to drive my car over into the water beneath it. The bridge sat at to bottom of a steep hill and when I crested the top of that hill to begin my decent a light surrounded my car and I heard God’s voice say “you are my child and I love you,” and it was that time that redefined who I was within but it did not change the church as I saw it. When I began to get more involved in the UCC and served on committees and boards on the association, conference and national level and particularly when I became a part of the staff of Back Bay Mission I was really opened up to not just the God who affirmed me but to know a church that affirmed me and I am thankful.

Don, a native of North Carolina, attended Shaw Divinity School in Raleigh, The Interdenominational Theological Center in Atlanta, and Lancaster Theological Seminary in Pennsylvania. A link to Don’s full profile is available here. Copies will be available at church or via email. Contact Pat James (minnesotapats@gmail.com) if you would like a copy of the profile via email.

All church members are encouraged to attend Don’s candidating sermon and the all-church meeting that follows. Non-members are also encouraged to attend and share your thoughts on Don’s preaching. 

As we’ve gone through this transition, HCC has been blessed by the devoted, creative leadership of our pastors and lay leaders on the Worship Committee. During this time the Search Committee realized that we were looking for a settled pastor who will join us on this journey of “Being the Church,” and we believe that in Reverend Donald Morgan we have found that person. 

Hallelujah! 

The HCC Search Committee,

Heather King, Jan Varnon, Doug Renick, Ann Loomis, Lisa Hall and Pat James, Chair