First Congregational Church, United Church of Christ
Community...
"When you look for salvation by yourself.... you are like a coal drawn out of the fire." --James Jones
One of the great strengths of First Congregational is that God has invited us, through the years, to move into a deep experience of community life. Many of us are people who felt "outside the lines" of traditional Christianity. Some of us felt like doctrinal Christianity left us empty when it came to finding meaning in life. Others of us were abandoned by our congregations when we started being honest about being gay or lesbian.
Revolutions
We come to First Congregational because we want a church which moves more quickly to welcome than to exclude, a church where the formulas for living are wide enough to include the whole of humanity. We believe that God loves us for who we are--not because we can repeat the right doctrines or force our lives into a particular cookie-cutter mold. We see in the Biblical accounts of the life of Jesus that God was able to love even beyond the boundaries of particular religious histories and traditions. We believe that we're called to love and to form community in the same way.
Cooper-Young Neighborhood Festival, 2005
All told, we share our space with 29 other organizations, all of whom have a calling to bring people together in an environment of healing, justice and reconciliation. We are midwives, language specialists, counselors, filmmakers, bicyclists, refugees, environmental activists, nutritional therapists, childcare workers....and we share space at 1000 South Cooper because we believe that community matters--and that our work is done better in shared space than on our own.