Pastor’s Welcome

Each Sunday morning at the Kingston Congregational Church, we begin worship with these words of welcome:

Whoever you are, and wherever you are on life’s journey, you are welcome here!

Many Christians ask the question: What would Jesus do? But surely one of the most important questions is: Who did Jesus include? We are a congregation deeply devoted to Christian faith and practice, but we welcome believers, seekers, doubters and skeptics. We welcome folks who are single, married, divorced, gay, rich, poor, younger and older, from all racial/ethnic backgrounds and all religious traditions. We welcome you to our church not just because Jesus welcomed everyone, though that would be abundant reason. We welcome you because we believe you have unique gifts to share with our community of faith, that you will be a blessing to all of us, that we will be a better church if you help make us so. You will see right away that we love music and singing and laughter, and babies crying during the sermon is fine with us. We don’t take ourselves too seriously, and we have a great time together, but we take our journey of faith together very seriously. We believe we are responsible for each other, for care and concern for all our people, and those in the larger community and world around us. We do all we can to reach out into the world in ministries of justice and peace that express the Good News that Jesus proclaimed when he taught us of the Kingdom of God. We believe all of creation is sacred and requires our vigilant protection and care. We do our best to connect our faith to all aspects of our lives, raising questions as we go, searching the ancient truths of our faith, and searching for the meanings of those truths in our time and place. We respect the conscience of each member and our right to disagree with each other, even as we seek harmony and warm fellowship within the congregation. We also honor the other great religions by which humankind searches the things of the Spirit, seeking mutual respect among faith traditions and cooperation among all faiths whenever possible. When I welcome visitors personally to our congregation, I always invite them to “act like you’ve always been here.” We believe you will feel so warmly welcomed that you will want to do just that. We look forward to meeting you and sharing with you the journey of faith and all the blessings that come along the way. Rev. Dr. L. Weldon Palmer Senior Pastor