Conservative Congregational Christian Conference

Heritage

Organized in 1948, drawing Congregational churches and pastors alarmed by liberal drift and, soon after, unwilling to enter the merger that produced the United Church of Christ in 1957. It gathered the evangelical wing of the old Congregational family — churches that wanted to keep both the New England heritage of the self-governing local church and a confessionally evangelical witness. It remains a conference of autonomous churches, many in New England and the upper Midwest, and has grown by welcoming like-minded congregations from other backgrounds.

Theological family

Evangelical and broadly Reformed: biblical authority stated plainly in its statement of faith, the new birth preached, with room for a range of views on secondary matters — Congregational breadth inside evangelical boundaries.

Who decides what

Congregational: every church self-governing; the Conference credentials ministers, gathers an annual meeting, and advises without commanding.

What a first-time visitor would find

A straightforward Protestant service — hymns or contemporary songs, substantial expository preaching, communion regularly; the feel runs from classic New England meetinghouse to modern evangelical.

What it has always cared about

The authority of Scripture held together with the freedom of the local church; pastoral credentialing done carefully in a polity with no bishops; the conviction that Congregationalism's founders were evangelicals and their heirs may be too.

Its gift to the wider church

It preserved an evangelical continuation of the Congregational way — proof that the tradition of the Pilgrims did not have to choose between its polity and its orthodoxy.

Commonly confused with

With the United Church of Christ, the larger and more progressive 1957 union it declined; and with the NACCC, which also stayed out of the merger but for polity reasons more than doctrinal ones.

Range of views inside it

Churches vary in worship style and in Reformed emphasis; all subscribe to the Conference's evangelical statement of faith.

Where Conservative Congregational Christian Conference churches are on the map

29 Conservative Congregational Christian Conference congregations appear on The Church Map, across 13 states.

• Massachusetts — 8
• New York — 5
• Connecticut — 4
• Illinois — 2
• Pennsylvania — 2
• North Dakota — 1
• Kansas — 1
• Michigan — 1
• Minnesota — 1
• South Dakota — 1