Being a biblically faithful church in rural Massachusetts was challenging.  Yet over two decades, the church grew in numbers, a Sunday School building was added, and the sanctuary was expanded as the 1950 red brick church proved insufficient to hold its people. Challenges to Biblical faithfulness from within slowly decreased even as opposition from without steadily increased. 

The fire began late at night in the boiler room. By early morning, despite valiant efforts to save the historic structure, the old wooden church building was gone. All that remained in the smoldering ashes were the steeple bell and a bronze plaque commemorating Deacon Jeremiah Mahoney’s 50 years of faithful service.  The fire was out, and the church building was destroyed but the fire of the Spirit had been quenched long before and the church was facing an even greater loss than their building.

For decades creeping liberalism had slowly drowned the fire and fervor of biblical Christianity in the First Congregational Church of Millers Falls, MA. When the old building burned in December 1949 its 200+ seating capacity was no longer needed. The remaining members rebuilt with poured concrete and red brick trying to insure permanence, but solid walls do not a church make.  The new sanctuary seated 100, plenty of room, even hopeful. Membership rolls listed 175, but worship attendance hovered in the dozens. The old mill town was small, the only other church, Roman Catholic, dominated the religious landscape, and gospel-less preaching provided no encouragement to draw anyone to First Congregational.

Founded in 1868 as a second preaching point of the mother church 5 miles away, First Congregational grew rapidly in its early years. A succession of preachers followed; called and installed by the church in the Congregational Way – advised by a temporary council of local ministers, but independent in their life and practice. Various men preached varied theologies and as New England Congregationalism drifted from its biblical moorings, First Congregational drifted as well.

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