First Congregational Church - United Church of Christ

We are a congregation of diverse Christian believers, empowered by love and guided by the Holy Spirit. It is our mission to enable personal spiritual growth, collective outreach to the community, and stewardship of God's creation.

We are a Progressive Christian Church

By calling ourselves progressive, we mean we are Christians who...

• Have found an approach to God through the life and teachings of Jesus.

• Recognize the faithfulness of other people who have other names for the way to God's realm, and acknowledge that their ways are true for them, as our ways are true for us.

• Understand the sharing of bread and wine in Jesus's name to be a representation of an ancient vision of God's feast for all
peoples

• Invite all people to participate in our community and worship life without insisting that they become like us in order to be
acceptable (including but not limited to):

- believers and agnostics,
- conventional Christians and questioning skeptics,
- women and men,
- those of all sexual orientations and gender identities,
- those of all races and cultures,
- those of all classes and abilities,
- those who hope for a better world and those who have lost hope

• Know that the way we behave toward one another and toward other people is the fullest expression of what we believe.

• Find more grace in the search for understanding than we do in dogmatic certainty - more value in questioning than in absolutes.

• Form ourselves into communities dedicated to equipping one another for the work we feel called to do: striving for peace and
justice among all people, protecting and restoring the integrity of all God's creation, and bringing hope to those Jesus called the least of his sisters and brothers

• Recognize that being followers of Jesus is costly, and entails selfless love, conscientious resistance to evil, and renunciation of privilege.

Open and Affirming without regard to sexual orientation

The United Church of Christ is a non-creedal and non-dogmatic church. As a progressive church, we are open to new ideas and are accepting of the ideas and behavior of others. We learn from each other as well as from our ancestors in faith. We truly believe there is much more truth to break forth from God's Word.

As an Open and Affirming Congregation of the United Church of Christ, we are a diverse group of people who have known the joy of having been accepted and affirmed by God and by one another. Our congregation is made up of persons of different ages, education, races, abilities, and sexual orientations. We hold varying theological and political beliefs and come from different socioeconomic and ethnic backgrounds. As a church community, we celebrate and find strength in that diversity and view it as a way to understand the inclusiveness of God's love.