36 N Main St, , West Brookfield, MA 01585

(508) 867-7078 | Worship with us each Sunday at 10 a.m. in person, ZOOM or FB

About Us

Learn more about our church, history and team.

We welcome you to the First Congregational Church of West Brookfield, MA, United Church of Christ.

Truly whoever you are, wherever you are on the journey, you are welcome here. We are a progressive, inclusive congregation who values diversity and freedom of expression in the Protestant tradition. Our polity is congregational and our faith identity is Christian. Our invitation is to all who desire to be together on a spiritual journey to serve our local communities and our wider world with justice and compassion. Come and join us and let us share faith and service, caring ministries and extravagant welcome to all.

We are a member of the United Church of Christ, a  mainline Protestant denomination, formed in 1957, with historical and confessional roots in the Congregational, Reformed, Lutheran, and Anabaptist traditions.

We, the members of the First Congregational Church of West Brookfield with member churches of  The United Church of Christ, acknowledge as our sole Head, Jesus Christ, Son of God and Savior. We acknowledge as kindred in Christ all who share in this confession. We look to the Word of God in the Scriptures, and to the presence and power of the Holy Spirit, to prosper the Spirit’s creative and redemptive work in the world. We claim as our own the faith of the historic Church expressed in the ancient creeds and reclaimed in the basic insights of the Protestant Reformers. We affirm 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, we recognize two sacraments: Baptism and the Lord’s Supper or Holy Communion.

We maintain full communion with other mainline Protestant denominations. We place high emphasis on participation in worldwide interfaith and ecumenical efforts. As a UCC member church, we are a member of the National Council of Churches and the World Council of Churches.

In our denomination, the United Church of Christ, the local church (also often called the congregation) is the basic unit, the foundation and beginning point of  life together. Local churches have the freedom to govern themselves, establishing their own internal organizational structures and theological positions. Thus, local church governance varies widely throughout our denomination. Some congregations, mainly of Congregational or Christian Connection origin, have numerous relatively independent “boards” that oversee different aspects of church life, with annual or more frequent meetings.  Other churches, mainly of Evangelical and Reformed descent, have one central “church council” or “consistory” that handles most or all affairs in a manner somewhat akin to a Presbyterian session, while still holding an annual congregational meeting,

We celebrate being UCC and being part of a wide, diverse family of faith.  Our hopes are that we will be a church united and uniting and be among those answering Jesus’ prayer in John 17:21  “that they may all be one.”

The By-Laws of First Congregational Church of West Brookfield and First Parish in West Brookfield (our official titles) guide our life together.  (latest revision was May 7, 2017)

Our Covenant states: We are united in striving to know the will of God as taught in the Holy Scriptures and in our purpose to walk in the ways of the Lord, made known or to be made known to us. We hold it to be the mission of the Church of Christ to proclaim the gospel to all humankind by exalting the worship of the one true God and laboring for the progress of knowledge and by the promotion of justice and of the reign of peace and by the realization of human kinship, depending, as did our ancestors, upon the continued guidance of the Holy Spirit to lead us into all truth.  We look with faith for the triumphs of righteousness and the life everlasting.

Our Officers:  Moderator, Clergy Parish Board, Treasurer, Assistant Treasurer, Collector, Auditor

Our Boards:  Deacons, Investment, Nominating, Parish, Pastor/Parish Relations, Religious Education

Our Committees:  History, Memorial, Missions, Music, Pastoral Search, Stewardship

Other Groups:  Church Council, Sharing Cupboard Food Pantry, UCC Delegates

Minister:  called by a 90% affirmative vote of the members of the Church/First Parish.

The duties and responsibilities are outlined in the By-Laws for the officers, boards and committees and groups in our church..  If you are needing to contact a volunteer serving our church in one of these areas of service, please call our church office.  If you are interested in church membership, please speak to the Minister.

 

We maintain full communion with other mainline Protestant denominations. We place high emphasis on participation in worldwide interfaith and ecumenical efforts. As a UCC member church, we are a member of the National Council of Churches and the World Council of Churches.

In our denomination, the United Church of Christ, the local church (also often called the congregation) is the basic unit, the foundation and beginning point of  life together. Local churches have the freedom to govern themselves, establishing their own internal organizational structures and theological positions. Thus, local church governance varies widely throughout our denomination. Some congregations, mainly of Congregational or Christian Connection origin, have numerous relatively independent “boards” that oversee different aspects of church life, with annual or more frequent meetings.  Other churches, mainly of Evangelical and Reformed descent, have one central “church council” or “consistory” that handles most or all affairs in a manner somewhat akin to a Presbyterian session, while still holding an annual congregational meeting,

We celebrate being UCC and being part of a wide, diverse family of faith.  Our hopes are that we will be a church united and uniting and be among those answering Jesus’ prayer in John 17:21  “that they may all be one.”

We welcome you to the First Congregational Church of West Brookfield, MA, United Church of Christ.

You are welcome here.

Truly whoever you are, wherever you are on the journey, you are welcome here. We are a progressive, inclusive congregation who values diversity and freedom of expression in the Protestant tradition. Our polity is congregational and our faith identity is Christian. Our invitation is to all who desire to be together on a spiritual journey to serve our local communities and our wider world with justice and compassion. Come and join us and let us share faith and service, caring ministries and extravagant welcome to all.

Contact Us

History

In the early 1700s, the Indian threat now gone, the Brookfield settlement grew rapidly, and the decision was made to build a new meeting house.

It was completed by 1717, located like its predecessor on the top of what is today known as Foster Hill, and the first service was held there on October 16, 1717. However, the settlement was now so large and far-flung that many of the inhabitants found it difficult to travel to the (then compulsory) Sabbath services.

Soon, pressure was building to build additional meeting houses to accommodate those distant inhabitants, and eventually the parish was divided into three: North Brookfield (2nd parish) in 1750, Brookfield (3rd parish) in 1754 and West Brookfield (1st parish) in 1755. These three parishes, then known for political purposes as “precincts” of the town of Brookfield, eventually became the basis for the towns of North Brookfield, Brookfield and West Brookfield, respectively.

Following the building of the new meeting houses, the original meeting house on Foster Hill was demolished. The new West Brookfield meeting house was built at essentially the site of the present-day Church in 1757.

Since then, there have been three additional buildings at roughly that location, one built in 1795 to accommodate a larger congregation, one built  in 1881 after the 1795 Church was destroyed by fire and one built in 1942 after the 1881 building was partially destroyed during the hurricane of 1938 (a portion of the 1881 building was preserved). This is our present-day Church building.

Lucy Stone

Lucy Stone was born in 1818 on Coy’s Hill in (today’s) West Brookfield, and grew up on the family farm there. At age 16 she became a school teacher in New Braintree, an occupation which she continued for the next several years. Her brother, W. Bowman Stone, then a student for the ministry, had a subscription to William Lloyd Garrison’s “Liberator” newspaper, and she became interested in the abolition cause. She joined the Congregational Church, and shortly afterward went to attend a lecture there by abolitionist speaker Abby Kelley in 1838. But, as we have seen, she was chagrined to learn later that she was not allowed to vote at the trial of the deacon who had without permission invited Kelley to speak.

She determined to go to college, and in the following years earned the money to do so. She was admitted to Oberlin College in Ohio (then the only college open to women) in 1843. It was there that she met Antoinette Brown (later to become the first female protestant minister) and became involved in the women’s rights movement. Upon graduation in 1847, she gave her first speech on women’s rights at the Gardner Congregational Church where her brother was minister. Shortly afterward she was hired as a paid lecturer by the New England Anti-Slavery Society, and it was probably because of this that she was expelled by the West Brookfield Congregational Church in 1851 for having “engaged in a course of life evidently inconsistent with her covenant engagement to this church.” It was still not considered by the church to be proper for a woman to speak in public.

In 1855 Lucy Stone married Henry Brown Blackwell, by mutual consent keeping her own last name. He was the brother of Samuel C. Blackwell who in 1856 married her friend Rev. Antoinette Brown, and was, like them, an ardent supporter of both the abolition and women’s rights causes.

In later years, especially after the Civil War (1861-1865), she became an avid and effective advocate for women’s rights, founding the American Woman Suffrage Association and the Woman’s Journal. She and an increasing number of like-minded people saw a similarity between the slavery system (now abolished) and the patriarchal system, which they felt continued to oppress women. In particular they began the fight for women’s right to vote, which was finally accomplished several years later in 1920 with the passing of the 19th amendment.

Lucy Stone died in 1893, and was cremated in Forest Hills Cemetery in Boston.

 

-Dave FitzGerald, Church Historian

 

 

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