About the United Church of Christ

Our church is a congregation of the United Church of Christ. Our faith is 2,000 years old, but our thinking is not. Our local congregation is over 100 years old and we continue to seek ways to be relevant to today’s needs because we believe that God is still speaking. We speak in contemporary ways and insist that since Jesus didn't turn people away, neither do we.

Our members and friends can best be described as progressive Christians. One of the hymns from our Pilgrim heritage says, ‘We limit not the truth of God to our poor reach of mind’. While we have strong core values, we understand that everyone needs to seek their own way on the paths to the Sacred. Boise First is an affiliate of The Center for Progressive Christianity. Learn more about progressive Christianity here and the UCC denomination here.

We have chosen to be an Open and Affirming (ONA) congregation — the designation for congregations, campus ministries, and other bodies in the United Church of Christ which make public statements to welcome into their full life and ministry persons of all sexual orientations and gender identities. Learn more about ONA congregations in the United Church of Christ here.

By calling ourselves progressive, we mean we are Christians who:

1. Have found an approach to God through the life and teachings of Jesus.

2. Recognize the faithfulness of other people who have other names for the way to God’s realm, and acknowledge that their ways are true for them, as our ways are true for us.

3. Understand the sharing of bread and wine in Jesus’ name to be a representation of an ancient vision of God’s feast for all peoples.

4. Invite all people to participate in our community and worship life without insisting that they become like us in order to be acceptable (including but not limited to): believers and agnostics, conventional Christians and questioning skeptics, women and men, those of all sexual orientations and gender identities, those of all races and cultures, those of all classes and abilities, those who hope for a better world and those who have lost hope.

5. Know that the way we behave toward one another and toward other people is the fullest expression of what we believe.

6. Find more grace in the search for understanding than we do in dogmatic certainty – more value in questioning than in absolutes.

7. Form ourselves into communities dedicated to equipping one another for the work we feel called to do: striving for peace and justice among all people, protecting and restoring the integrity of all of God’s creation, and bringing hope to those Jesus called the least of his sisters and brothers.

8. Recognize that being followers of Jesus is costly, and entails selfless love, conscientious resistance to evil, and renunciation of privilege.