The new community is only a set of conversations at the moment. Maybe it will take shape over dinner and singing gatherings that happen on Sunday nights instead of mornings. Maybe it’s a monthly Gospel Brunch! Maybe it’s a series of workshops and small groups focused on spirituality topics or particular challenges. Maybe it’s a volunteer clearinghouse, where those looking to serve are matched with opportunities. Maybe it’s programs like the Bombyx Fellows Program. Maybe it’s all of these things! Interested?

What we are studying is a “mixed economy” model of church. The mid-20th century model of congregational belonging is simply not useful to most people these days, but people are no less spiritually curious or hungry for meaningful participation in community. There are lots of ways to connect to God and the sacred generally. We are hoping to develop opportunities to help more people do just that. Want to help?

YES! YES! YES!

Pastor Marisa likes to say, “The God you don’t believe in is probably not a God I believe in either.” Most of us go around with an idea of “God” akin to a six-year-old’s image of a bearded man in the sky surrounded by clouds. We are not a spiritually literate culture. One of the downsides of 500 years of Christianity since the Enlightenment is that we have reduced faith to mere belief, as if religion was entirely a cerebral activity. But faith is so much larger than that!

If we’re honest, church membership has always been made up of a range of beliefs and unbeliefs. People have attended churches for all sorts of reasons. For friendship, for food, for a period of contemplation, to support a more religious spouse, to sing awesome music in harmony, to give kids a foundation, to show off something they’re proud of, to feel like they’re a respectable member of society (whatever that means), and so on. It was once the case that you couldn’t vote unless you were a church member! As more coercive social pressures have fallen away, we churches are having a real reckoning that much of the reason more people used to attend church has to do with shame and fear. Shame and fear are not gifts of God. But connection with community, in song, food, and joy, and this larger, mysterious human capacity for vulnerability and trust we call “faith?” These are precious gifts. And our story tells us that God’s intention was to give us these gifts abundantly! All of us!

FCC has been in decline for many years. This is the case for the majority of American churches in recent decades. This trend has been well documented by organizations like the Pew and Lilly Foundations. Congregations in the Northeast, where there are plenty of historic (read: expensive to maintain) church buildings, and far more churches than there are people to gather in them, have been hit the hardest. FCC is no exception.

In November of 2022, the church called Pastor Marisa to lead a transformation of some kind in hopes that the partnership with Bombyx would create new opportunities for the church to live on. A major part of her work so far has been updating our financial and information systems so that we can have a better sense of our overall picture. In May, 2023, at the church’s annual meeting, we had a challenging but honest discussion of what the real picture of our finances and congregation size meant for the future. With limited time and budget, the changes would need to be immediate and drastic.

A restart, rather than a “revitalization” or a “renewal,” is a specific effort by a church that has reached the end of its natural life cycle to begin anew, differently, with different people.


The general template of a restart is to close for a time, change everything, and relaunch as a new church with historic ties to the past. In our case, it also means creating a new “business model” driven by programming, rather than by building rentals, since Bombyx will ultimately be the owner of our building. What the leadership voted for in May was to proceed with a “parallel restart,” in which the existing congregation continues on while resources are focused on gathering a new, more sustainable congregation.

No, not if this plan works! The remaining congregation will continue in some form for a while, recognizing that the tight community that has been built, and the love and devotion that has gone into keeping it alive, are incredibly precious, but also largely inaccessible to newcomers. A new model of membership comprised of people who connect through any of a variety of services, workshops, small groups, programs, or other opportunities will decide what direction to go in. Once that leadership and direction is in place, the remaining congregation members will be able to decide if they want to continue meeting as they have, join in the activities of the new, larger membership, attend a different church, or simply disband. description

Yes, but everyone’s definition of “Christian” is different. No two people in our existing congregation hold the same exact definition.

Congregationalism is not a creedal tradition. That means, historically, assenting to a creed or other statement of belief is not a requirement for membership. While some congregational churches do make use of creeds, the core of this particular tradition is an emphasis on the gathered community’s best wisdom and spiritual discernment to autonomously decide how to gather to worship, pray, and to simply enjoy one another’s company.

We have inherited a staggering, mind-bending story about Jesus, all the Hebrew scriptures that came before him, the letters and testimonies of the earliest followers of Christ, as well as two thousand years of practices and traditions that have favored some approaches over others. We’ve had reformations, counterreformations, revivals, and retrenchment. Now, we also have a wildly globalized society in which we Westerners of conscience are trying to learn from the peoples and cultures Christian institutions once villified or denigrated. There’s a lot to work with here! (Read Pastor Marisa’s invitation for more on this complex question!)

Everything begins with conversations. Join our mailing list below to find out what’s coming up. Have a conversation with Pastor Marisa about what your spirit is asking for.