Who We Are Today
Who We Are
First Congregational Church of Redlands is the oldest Protestant church in our city.
This historical connection to our community means you cannot tell the story of our church or city without one another. We value our connection to the life and vitality of our city as our weekly liturgy, generous orthodoxy, and shared leadership have enabled us to flourish for generations before us and generations to come.
What We Believe
We are a confessional church, which means we are unified by our shared confession. We recite our Words of Witness each Sunday morning as both a reminder of our unity in Christ and as our public statement of the substance of our faith:
“We believe in God the Father infinite in wisdom, goodness and love; and in Jesus Christ, His Son, our Lord and Savior, Who for us and our salvation lived and died and rose again and lives evermore; and in the Holy Spirit, Who takes the things of Christ and reveals them to us, renewing, comforting, and inspiring our souls. 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.”
Our Vision for Shared Leadership
FCC Redlands is a Congregational Church.
If you wish to dive deeply into our denomination’s history, you can do so here. But for the sake of brevity: we are a church that makes decisions together. The highest governing body of our church is our members, which means that what we do, we do together. Whether it’s sitting on committees that oversee a church ministry, our complete transparency regarding our finances, volunteering with our children, or serving coffee and cookies after our worship gathering, we are a church that is exactly as strong as our membership.
Our Passion for Music
One of the most cherished values of our church is excellence in music.
This value may be because of our magnificent organ. It could be because of our Sunday liturgy that we inherited from generations past. Perhaps it’s because Christians have supported artists and celebrated art throughout history, and we are part of that tradition. Ultimately, we value excellence in musical worship because we want to give God our best, and beauty moves our hearts.
An Eclectic Community
We aim to be a big-tent, eclectic church that focuses on the essentials of our faith to create unity.
Of course, we don’t share the same political opinions or agree on every point of Christian doctrine. What would be the point of everyone thinking the same? Instead, we major on the majors (as expressed in the Apostles’ Creed) that our minor differences need not divide us when we have so much in common. We seek to be an open-handed church in an increasingly close-fisted time.