First Congregational Church of Stockbridge, UCC

02/05/2026

https://mailchi.mp/67d1bf9d4621/this-week-at-first-congregational-church-17454038

07/08/2025

4️⃣ Days ‼️ Until General Synod 35!

🗳️ Are you ready to vote for the proposed resolutions and by-laws amendments?

📖 Make sure you know as much as you can about the General Synod resolutions and by-laws amendments prior to voting. Remember, there are five *NEW* emergency resolutions recently added.

👉🏾 Learn all about the Resolution process and details about each resolution and amendment under the "business" tab on the General Synod website: https://ow.ly/v2Xp50Wm0mC

07/08/2025

Berkshire Association's Summer 2025 Newsletter:https://stockbridgeucc.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/2025-07-berkshire-association-newsletter-final.pdf

And, behold, all the earth sitteth still, and
is at rest. Zechariah 1:11

Summer is here…sunscreen, flipflops,
afternoon thunderstorms, visitors, family
reunions, beach vacations, backyard
barbecues, fireflies and fireworks. Who
doesn’t love long, hot summer days.
Beneath the teeming activity of a summer
day, there is the slow but steady hum of
peace of summer nights when darkness
comes late and the whir of an overhead fan
churns rhythmically through the oppressive
heat to bring on sleep.
There is this moment, and it is just a
moment, as brief as the flicker of a firefly’s
light, when it seems all the earth sits still, and
the striving, the toiling, the contradictions of
your day come to a complete rest. When
greed and need no longer drive you and all
desires within you cease. When you simply
are, swimming, as the psalmist says, in a sea
of mercy as in an endless sea. And you
know, if only for this split second, that
wherever you are God is and all is well.
It is a delicious moment, made rich by its
depth, made precious by its brevity.
May you enjoy the many blessings of
summer days and summer nights. And don’t
forget to come to the Berkshire Association
All-Church Summer Potluck Picnic on
August 9th! It will be hot. It will be buggy. It
might even rain. But it will be fun, because
you all are there.
~ Cara Davis

05/07/2025

04/18/2025

Dear church family,

Last Sunday was a big Sunday here at church. From the joy and triumph of the entry to the despair of betrayal and to the pain of judgment we didn't just watch or listen as the story from poem to cross unfolded, we joined in. I hope that the meaning and the purpose and the truth and the beauty and the connection and the fellowship are lingering.

Over the next few days we have a chance to engage that story again in new ways. Tonight, we will experience the gift of how Jesus came to serve and remember that in John's gospel that the Last Supper was not about bread and cup but about humility and love through foot washing. The choir will join us and there will be the chance to engage in that profound and intimate act.

Tomorrow, we stand at the foot of the cross that very cross that we have been loading with our beads of confession and our beads of gratitude. We will stand there and we will try to take it in. Jesus will be there pouring out love and pouring out grace and our job is simply to stand there and to embrace it. Our job is to stand there and recognize our human condition and God's great gift of grace.

And then, then, this Sunday will be an even bigger Sunday. So big that we will have two services - one at sunrise and one at ten. So big the kids will be racing around the front lawn looking for joy. So big that the choir will burst forth in a joyous noise and we will have no choice but to join in. So big that the cross itself will blossom not in crucifixion, but in life.

May these days meet you in peace and may Sunday embrace you in life. Come and see.

Pastor Brent

Festival Worship service is at 10:00am on Sunday. Livestream available.

www.stockbridgeucc.org

01/30/2025

Dear Church Family,

My Lord What a Morning! This past Sunday was so full at 4 Main Street. The sanctuary was full of people, emotion, music, truth, and beauty - we drew our circles wide and then wider still. The J.E. Room continued that fullness with tables overflowing with food, cakes parading, songs crafted and lifted, and community joyfully broadening and deepening. Thank you to all who helped organize, lead, bake, or attend.

This coming Sunday the phrase - "second verse same as the first" comes to mind. It will be another full, even if differently so, day. Worship will focus directly on sabbath and communion with special music and the joy of gathering at the table (don't forget about the invitation to bring donations of food or funds for the People's Pantry). Then we will move to the J.E. Room to grab some food and settle our children into activities in the Nursery before returning to the Sanctuary for our Annual Budget Meeting.

That meeting will likewise be full. We will celebrate the abundance of blessings from last year's budget. We will look forward to the coming year and how we will financially support our ministries. We will share a new resource called the Relational Covenant that we hope will help us live into our calling of becoming the beloved community. We will consider a proposal from the Trustees to bring a solar project to the church and the exciting possibilities of what that would mean. This Sunday we will discover yet one more full morning and leave full - full of joy, full of gratitude, full of love, and full of grace to meet these times in hope and peace.

Come and see,

Brent

worship is 10:00 on Sunday in the sanctuary and via Livestream

An Open and Affirming Christian church in the Berkshires of Western Massachusetts.

01/17/2025

Dear Church Family,

The bicentennial of our nation is still one of my most vivid childhood memories. I remember that that year was the only year that our school photos were taken in front of a flag, it was the “Betsy Ross” flag with the 13 stars in a circle. I still remember the bicentennial quarters and the great interest in trying to collect them all. I remember the huge fireworks displays and a woman named Sandy Patty singing the national anthem. It was such a big event for our country. In retrospect our celebrations showed both the longevity of our nation and also our relative youth.

This Sunday we will mark and remember the bicentennial of our sanctuary. The church was founded much earlier, in 1734, but our building, our meetinghouse, that room we know as God's house turns 200 on Monday.

It is a significant milestone. It still amazes me that we gather in a 200-year-old building every week. There is much that has happened within the walls of our sanctuary and much that is still happening. How wonderful that on this anniversary Sunday – even as we look back – we will also be looking forward to the future through the sacrament of baptism. We will recognize in the tiny baby, a new generation and our role in helping to foster, nourish, and teach that generation.

This milestone also, I hope, reminds us of our relative youth. We are still in the grand sweep of our faith or of churches in general a young church. We have vitality and vigor; we rightly think fondly about those who have come before and yet it is still likely that even more generations are yet to follow.

This Sunday as we look backwards and forwards, we are gifted with a scriptural text evoking the prophetic nature of Jesus. That too is so fitting as we will also remember a more recent prophet: the Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King, Jr.

It will be a full day at 4 Main St. this coming Sunday. Yet again with the Spirit swirling in our midst, they usually are. Come and see.

Brent

Worship will be 10:00am on Sunday in the sanctuary and via livestream www.stockbridgeucc.org

01/09/2025

Dear Church Family,

The story of Jesus's baptism is a critically important story not just for the life of the church, but I hope for each of our lives too. It is a moment of amazing connections. Jesus makes his connection with humanity taking part in the same ritual that we all do a ritual of belonging. Is in the midst of his baptism that the heavens are opened, and God makes the connection not only to his beloved child but also to the covenant that binds God and humanity in love. It is a moment of a new beginning, after his Baptism, Jesus goes into the wilderness to prepare for his ministry.

It is also a new beginning for the people. Granted it is a new beginning in a very long and ongoing story, but it is a new beginning, nonetheless. Luke's gospel spends very little time on the actual act of Jesus being baptized. Luke instead spends a great deal of time and the people who have come for baptism, on the questions they have for what this baptism means for their lives, end of the teachings that John the Baptizer offers. Luke also does not have the heaven's opening or the dove descending as part of the baptism cover but rather as something that manifests after the baptism and as Jesus is in the midst of prayer. In both cases having been baptized the question is what next?

As we encounter this story again, we will take time to consider the connections we share with God and neighbor. We will take time to consider how this might even now be a new beginning for each of us and for our church. We will do what Jesus does. We will pray and we will await the coming of the spirit to whisper our belovedness and offer insights as to what might be next. Come and see!

Brent

Worship is Sunday at 10:00 in the sanctuary, also available via livestream, www.stockbridgeucc.org

01/02/2025

Dear Church Family,

I hope that your Christmas was full of love and possibility. I hope that this New Year, fresh with this little blanket of snow, is beginning in joy and imagination.

This Sunday, as we gather in worship, we switch from the season of Christmas to the season of Epiphany. The new season starts with a story full of joy and imagination-the story of the Magi. Over the centuries we have taken this amazing story of searching and moving and finding and returning and we have added through our own imagination so many vibrant and rich details to the story that they now feel an inherent part of that story. In some ways that is a beautiful model for our life together as church and family: to keep using our hearts and minds to enter into the story and to flesh it out.

It has been nice to lay low for a week and now I look forward to seeing you back here at 4 Main St. on Sunday morning to hear about your adventures and to live into these new moments together with love, possibility, joy, and imagination. Come and see!

Pastor Brent

Sunday service is at 10:00am in the sanctuary; available via Livestream, www.stockbridgeucc.org

12/20/2024

Dear Church Family,

Are you still feeling the joy from last Sunday? Is your mouth still curling into a smile remembering how our children (with the help of Elisabeth Bellows) brought the Christmas story to life? Is there an extra bounce in your step thinking about the amazing people who have claimed this place as home for decades? Are you so grateful that new folks are still finding this place and bringing their stories and their faith to our collective journey and our chosen family? I hope so because joy is experienced in the moment but is not a fleeting thing - it lingers, it remains, it strengthens, it uplifts.

This Sunday as we draw nearer to the stable, as we approach that star's resting place, we remember the final theme of advent: love. Sometimes I think we fall into the trap of thinking that God's love is so big that it just blankets everything thoughtlessly and unknowingly, but our reading this Sunday from the prophet Micah reminds us that God's love is alive, it is responsive, it is particular, it is directed, it is given as a gift of salvation.

This Sunday we gather with hope, peace, and joy still lingering on the air. This Sunday, the final Sunday of Advent, we gather to remember the gift of Christmas is love poured out and to do the final things we can do to prepare ourselves to receive it - not as something earned, but rather as grace - freely given. Come and see!

Brent

worship is at 10:00 on Sunday in the sanctuary and via Livestream. Christmas Eve service is at 5:00pm, 4:30 preludes.

www.stockbridgeucc.org

12/12/2024

Dear Church Family,

This Sunday is a very special Sunday in church - one dedicated to joy. Joy in a Christian sense is more than happiness. Joy is a profound lingering of positive goodness because of who we are and to whom we belong. Joy is a sibling of hope in that it is not some ephemeral thing but an enduring reality grounded in God's enduring goodness.

We will experience the joy of the Christmas story brought to life through the imagination and creative abilities of our children. (A special and huge thank you to Elisabeth Bellows who has helped to shepherd this process throughout the Fall.)

We will experience the joy of new members becoming part of our church family. Finally, we will welcome the long-time members of this church, those who have claimed family here for 20 years or more. The Christmas story is the Christian story, the story of moving toward, of banding together, of surprises and the world turning right side up again, and of all (really all) not only being welcomed, but being included and needed.

Could you use a little joy in your life? Well then, the answer is simple, come and see.

Pastor Brent

Worship service is Sunday at 10:00am in person or via Livestream www.stockbridgeucc.org