Worship Services

Sunday morning weekly
11:00 am, Sanctuary (10:00 am July – Aug) 

Jazz service
3rd Sunday of the month, 5:00 pm, Margaret Jewett Hall (Sept – June) 

Night Song
weekly, 7:00 pm, Sanctuary (Nov – April)

Worship is the center of our church life—we were made for the praise of God’s glory! In worship, we give thanks for God’s beauty and goodness.

We receive God’s gift of mercy. We experience God’s power to bring life from death. Worship also steeps us in practices such as hospitality, prayer, gratitude, generosity, reconciliation, healing, and silence—disciplines that help us grow us as followers of Jesus. 

Worship is focused on God, but it does not distance us from the needs and challenges of the world. As we worship God, our hearts are reshaped to care about God’s cares—justice and human solidarity. 

From a more traditional Sunday morning service whose liturgy will feel familiar to UCC Congregationalists to the quiet of Sunday evening Night Song worship to the African-American spirituals and musical (and liturgical) improvisations of our monthly Jazz service, First Church offers a diverse range of worship experiences.

Communion is offered at morning worship on the first Sunday of the month, as is traditional with many Protestant churches, as well as during other services in the liturgical calendar. After each communion service, church deacons offer healing prayer and oil-anointing to anyone who seeks that individual time and care.

We also prepare lunches on communion Sundays for the Outdoor Church, which is a ministry for homeless people in Cambridge.

Four times a year during the morning service, we offer a healing ritual, where two-person teams of ministers and lay leaders pray with individuals, who may also have oil anointing and laying on of hands if they so choose. This powerful service has proved to be a moving and inspirational blessing to our congregation and to visitors.

Annually, the church also opens its doors for a Blessing of the Animals, with cats, dogs, birds and other creatures joining us in worship (and often raising up their voices with us in “song”). Photos, toys or other symbols of animals who are at the service only in spirit are also welcomed for blessings by our ministers and lay leaders.

Our sanctuary and other worship spaces are fully accessible.  For more information about Accessibilty at First Church, please click here.