Second Congregational Church -- United Church of Christ

About our denomination

The Massachusetts Conference is a regional body of a national Protestant church formed in 1957 and named The United Church of Christ. Nationally the United Church of Christ has 6,100 local churches and 1.4 million members. It is also the largest Protestant denomination in Massachusetts.

The 1957 merger brought together the Congregational Christian Churches and the Evangelical and Reformed Church. In Massachusetts, a large majority of the churches were "Congregational" and still carry this name today. The Congregational Church dates back to the 1620's with the Pilgrims at Plymouth and the Puritans of the Massachusetts Bay Colony.

The United Church of Christ is a non-hierarchical church that maintains that every member is called to ministry. Local congregations are self-governing; each selects and calls its own pastoral leadership.

While members of the United Church of Christ embrace a wide diversity of theological positions, its beliefs can be summed up in the following statement from the Preamble to the Constitution of the United Church of Christ.

The United Church of Christ acknowledges as its sole head, Jesus Christ, Son of God and Savior. It acknowledges as kindred in Christ all who share in this confession. It looks to the Word of God in the Scriptures, and to the presence and power of the Holy Spirit, to prosper its creative and redemptive work in the world. It claims as its own the faith of the historic Church expressed in the ancient creeds and reclaimed in the basic insights of the Protestant Reformers. It affirms the responsibility of the church in each generation to make this faith its own in reality of worship, in honesty of thought and expression, and in purity of heart before God. In accordance with the teaching of our Lord and the practice prevailing among evangelical Christians, it recognizes two sacraments: Baptism and the Lord's Supper or Holy Communion.

The motto of the United Church of Christ is That They May All Be One. This is from the prayer of Jesus in John 17:11 for the unity of the church. Members of the United Church have been leaders in the movement to heal the divisions in the Christian church, and local congregations welcome into membership people from a diversity of religious backgrounds.