DECEMBER 2025

By Dr. Amanda Udis-Kessler

“God has told you, O mortal, what is good, and what does the Holy require of you but to do justice and to love kindness and to walk humbly with your God?” (Micah 6:8)

Dear UCCMA members,

As I write this column I am a week into my new role as Transitional Pastor at Vista Grande Community Church UCC and therefore am thinking deeply about the role of relationship building and spiritual growth in institutional change. Religious communities cannot weather the challenges of discernment, visioning, and becoming our next best selves without both community development and practices of humility, patience, and ego surrender (among other virtues).

What does any of that have to do with diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI)? Everything. A commitment to DEI is a commitment to expanding and deepening our relationships, engaging with new people and understanding who people are and how they make sense of the world in ways that we may not have previously considered. Diversity demands relationship, or it will fail.

Similarly, a commitment to equity and inclusion demands the kind of spiritual development that allows us to truly love our neighbor as ourself. Without cultivating humility, patience, and ego surrender, we will struggle to lay down our privilege and work for the well-being of others even when their well-being may cost us something in the way of status or advantages.

The way of Jesus is a path of relationship-building and spiritual development even as it is a path of struggle, joy, and justice. The way of DEI is similarly a path of relationship-building and spiritual development – and just as much a path of struggle, joy, and justice in its own way.

Last time, I promised to use this column to consider the message that is sent (however unintentionally) when people oppose DEI. I’ll now write that post in February. It’s still an important topic.

Wishing you all an Advent of fierce waiting and tender hoping and a Christmas of delight and celebration – and may all your Christmas Eve services flow smoothly with no technical or musical difficulties!

All peace, Amanda

amanda@amandaudiskessler.com

NOVEMBER 2025

“God has told you, O mortal, what is good, and what does the Holy require of you but to do justice and to love kindness and to walk humbly with your God?” — (Micah 6:8)

Dear UCCMA members,

As I write this column, my congregation is in the middle of a worship series called “Enter the River; Spiritual Practices for Times of Chaos.” This Sunday, our spiritual practice will be learning protest songs for congregation members who want to sing at the No Kings protest coming up (including songs from various religious traditions). Truly, music can be one of those opportunities to bring the Sacred to the streets.

In my first column, I promised to say more about the connection between DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) and justice in the prophetic tradition. How can we see DEI through a Biblical lens?

Here are some thoughts drawn from the Saturday sharing I offered in September:

Isaiah (1:17) tells us to “seek justice; rescue the oppressed; defend the orphan; plead for the widow.” Justice is thus not just abstract fairness but a specific lifting up of the most devalued and endangered among us. Alleviating their suffering is a higher priority than making the comfortable more comfortable.

While there are still actual orphans and widows among us, we do well to ask who the most devalued and endangered groups are in our country today. When we ask this, we find that “DEI” as a set of institutional and cultural practices is an important way to address historic and current injustices. It offers members of devalued groups access to the opportunities that will allow them to flourish and have good lives. Thus, diversity, equity, and inclusion are ways of prioritizing justice in our time and place – justice for today’s equivalent of the orphan and widow. 

I’ll continue developing these ideas and asking what they have to do with us in my next column, where I will consider the message that is sent (however unintentionally) when people oppose DEI. 

Until then, may you be held in sacred care.

All peace, 

Amanda
Dr. Amanda Udis-Kessler

amanda@amandaudiskessler.com

AUGUST 2025

Dear UCCMA members,

Hello from your new Director of DEI and Member Education! My name is Amanda and I’m a hymnwriter, sacred music composer, and church musician in Colorado Springs, Colorado (as well as a sociologist and antiracism trainer). Having recently joined the UCCMA Board after several years of membership, I wanted to start a column in the newsletter to help us think about what our church music work has to do with justice. I’m calling the column “Micah 6:8 Reflections” because it is my favorite Bible verse. It reads:

“God has told you, O mortal, what is good, and what does the Holy require of you but to do justice and to love kindness and to walk humbly with your God?”

The words and actions of Jesus show a similar commitment to justice, and so we are invited in our musical support of UCC (and other) congregations to keep the same commitment to justice.

What does a commitment to justice look like in a church music context? To get started, let’s review our Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion statement as created and approved in 2024.

The UCCMA DEI statement reads:

“Recognizing that people provide musical leadership in every congregation and that the congregations where they serve differ in many ways, we seek to welcome and support all who serve as congregational musicians, regardless of their musical education and experiences, by providing resources that help congregations to love, support, and seek justice for people of all kinds.

We are dedicated to fostering a rich tapestry of individuals on the UCCMA board by actively recruiting people from a wide range of ethnicities, gender identities, ages, locations, socio-economic status, and congregation sizes to serve on the board.

We seek to be mindful of the different worldviews among musicians and congregations. Therefore, we strive to celebrate and respect those differences which can include but are not limited to sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, race/ethnicity, different abilities, mental health, socio-economic status, immigration status, cultural background, age, experience with incarceration, addictions, or homelessness. In order to make UCCMA membership available to all, we are working to establish an endowment fund that will allow us to offer free membership to all UCC congregations, pastors, and musicians.

We acknowledge that the UCC includes congregations that vary widely in age, size, location, history, financial stability, and worship style and that all are part of the UCCMA mission.

We also welcome participation from musicians serving congregations of other denominations and are happy to share our resources and events with any persons or communities that find them helpful.

We seek to assist and learn from all who minister through music and the arts.”

This statement, though focused on DEI, also references justice. What do the two have to do with one another? While that question deserves its own column and will be my focus for the next newsletter, one connective point is the idea that since all people are made in the image of the Sacred (Imago Dei), any work for justice that will allow all people to flourish requires a focus on diversity, equity, and inclusion in a society that is clearly not currently committed to any of those. I hope to use this column to help us church musicians and music directors think more creatively about our possible roles in the prophetic work of justice.

If there’s a topic that you’d like to see me cover in future columns, please email me and tell me about it. I’m also happy to try to answer your questions about these issues, or to direct those questions to people who can better answer them.

Until next time, may you be held in sacred care.

All peace,

Dr. Amanda Udis-Kessler

amanda@amandaudiskessler.com