Located at 8300 South Meridian Street on the south side of Indianapolis, Friedens United Church of Christ has built its identity around a single German word. Friedens means "peace," and the congregation traces the name to Ephesians 4:3 and the call to "keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace." Its welcome extends outward in similar language. The congregation has adopted an Open and Affirming Covenant that names, without exception, every race, gender, sexual orientation, economic status, marital status, education, background, age, ability, and political belief, and adds simply, "At Friedens all means all." Members and visitors are met each Sunday with the same invitation: "Come and See."
Two Sunday Mornings, One Welcome
Friedens gathers twice each Sunday on its South Meridian campus. At 8:30 a.m., a smaller and quieter congregation meets in the sanctuary for a liturgical service with weekly communion. At 10:30 a.m., the larger congregation gathers for a more traditional service that includes more children and offers communion once a month. The 10:30 service is broadcast live each week on the church's Live Worship page, and recordings of recent worship services, holiday services, memorial services, and other special services are kept in an online video archive that stretches back several years.
Visitors are not asked to identify themselves as guests, and there is no pressure to join or commit. Communion is open to anyone who wishes to participate, member or not. "We're friendly, but we won't overdo it," the congregation says plainly.
Liturgical Worship That Follows the Church Year
Worship at Friedens is liturgical, a word drawn from the Greek for "the work of the people." The service moves through responsive readings, congregational prayer, singing, the sacraments of baptism and holy communion, and a sermon that is teaching-oriented. The order follows a calendar that moves through the seasons of the Christian year, drawing its content from the life of Jesus as told in the Gospels.
Many symbols shape the experience. Colored cloths mark the seasons on the communion table. Candles, special furnishings, and the sacraments of baptism and holy communion each carry their own meaning. The congregation is candid that liturgical worship has been called an acquired taste. "It's a little old fashioned. We don't pretend to be something we aren't; we do what we do as well as we can." Worshipers are invited to take their time learning the rhythm.
What to wear is left to the worshipper. Some dress more formally, others more casually. The congregation's only stated expectation is an open mind and a warm heart.
A Sanctuary Built for Sacred Music
Music is central to the sanctuary's identity. The chancel houses a twenty-six rank Schlicker pipe organ, an Estonia grand piano, hand bells, hand chimes, and a large Schulmerich carillon. Choral and congregational singing carry most services, with the Chancel Choir serving as the core ensemble.
The Chancel Choir sings at the 10:30 service from Labor Day through Memorial Day, rehearsing on Wednesday evenings from 7:00 to 8:30. About thirty-five members strong, the choir ranges in age from the early twenties to the mid-eighties. Anyone who enjoys singing is welcome; the ability to read music is helpful but not required, and members are not expected to be present every Sunday. The Sounds of Peace Bell Choir rehearses on Wednesdays from 6:00 to 6:50 and plays one Sunday a month during the 10:30 service. Music reading is expected for the bells, but the choir will teach new members everything else. The Praise Makers Children's Choir sings every six to eight weeks at the 10:30 service and leads the Family Christmas Eve service each year. Children rehearse during Treasure Seekers, so there is no time commitment outside of Sunday morning.
Each year, the Thomas G. Williams Memorial Music Fund, established in honor of Friedens' longtime organist Tom Williams, hires a young person studying music at a local university as the Friedens UCC Choral Scholar. The scholar sings with the Chancel Choir and offers solo work at both Sunday services. The fund also brings guest musicians to worship throughout the year, with a preference for college students and emerging professionals, in tribute to Williams' dual legacy as a music educator and church musician.
Treasure Seekers, Nursery, and Confirmation
Children are part of the life of the congregation from their first Sunday. Nursery care is available each week during the 10:30 service. After the first part of that service in the sanctuary, children who are toddlers through fifth grade are invited into Treasure Seekers, an age-appropriate ministry that gathers during the latter part of worship. Topics range across the Bible and the life of faith, and the program reaches beyond Sunday morning with seasonal events and Vacation Bible School.
Older youth begin a more intentional journey through Confirmation, which runs from August through April for students in eighth grade and above. Each confirmand meets monthly with a mentor and joins a monthly group conversation, exploring a different facet of faith and the Christian tradition. Mentors meet their students in a public space in keeping with the congregation's safe church policies. Students who choose to make a public affirmation of faith participate in the rite of confirmation on Palm Sunday, often writing a brief faith statement as part of their preparation.
Middle and high school youth also lead within the congregation, serving as readers, ushers, and communion assistants, guiding younger kids in Treasure Seekers and Vacation Bible School, and contributing vocal or instrumental music under the direction of the music director.
Revive & Thrive and the Sunday Morning Table
For adults, the church offers Revive & Thrive, a Sunday morning class that meets in Hayden Hall from 9:30 to about 10:15 a.m., between the two worship services. The group studies books, Scripture, sermons, podcasts, and published guides, with a different facilitator leading each week. Members are couples and singles, longtime Friedens families and newcomers, and attendance runs roughly eight to twelve each week. There are no requirements beyond a willingness to learn from God and from one another. Each lesson is a standalone unit, so joining in the middle of a series is welcome.
The Christian Education Ministry team also curates seasonal studies, book discussions, action-reflection activities, and creative gatherings that reach beyond Sunday morning.
Conscious Caring Community
Young adults between roughly twenty and forty gather under the banner of Conscious Caring Community, a series of topical evenings that mix wellness, social justice, and creativity. Past gatherings have included pie baking for Wheeler Mission, henna nights, the Enneagram, food culture and mobility discussions, sound meditation, environmental justice, bias awareness, advocacy and letter writing, herbal immunity work, hiking, and picnics. The gatherings are open to anyone in that stretch of life who wants to build relationships and explore faith through shared experience.
Visitation and the Meal Ministry
At any given time, between twenty and thirty members of Friedens are homebound or living in healthcare facilities. A Visitation Ministry Team of nearly twenty people visits those members monthly, often sending cards between visits and bringing a poinsettia from the church in December. When pastoral care is needed, visitors reach out to the pastors.
The Meal Ministry draws on more than twenty volunteers, mostly women of the congregation, who prepare and deliver complete, homemade meals to families after the birth of a baby, after surgery, during a course of treatment, and at other moments of need. In one recent year the team delivered 115 meals, up sixfold from the year before.
The Health of the Whole Person
Health Ministry at Friedens is an ongoing program of preventive care and education that opens many of its events to the wider community. The team hosts an annual flu and pneumonia clinic in early fall, monthly blood pressure screenings, and blood drives. It maintains three first aid kits on campus, one of which travels off site with youth programming, and partners with the University of Indianapolis School of Nursing, whose senior students help with screenings and lead projects such as a health fair and a walking program. The ministry teaches a two day Safe Sitter class for adolescents in the congregation and brings short presentations on AED use and on staying healthy to seniors and to preschoolers at Cooperative Play Academy, a partner preschool that meets on the Friedens campus.
Sharing the Love of Christ Near and Far
The Outreach Ministry Team coordinates the congregation's giving of time, talent, and money to a long list of local, national, and international partners. The local list is dense by design and rooted in the church's south side neighborhood. Friedens fills Weekender Food Packs for more than seventy food-insecure students at Glenns Valley Elementary School and at Perry Township Preschool. It supports Hunger, Inc., a local food pantry, with an ongoing peanut butter collection and an annual financial gift. Exodus Refugee Immigration, Wheeler Mission Ministries, and Perry Township Senior Services each receive yearly budgeted contributions, supplemented every third year by the Giving Tree and Christmas in July collections. One Sunday a month, Friedens volunteers cook and deliver meals to people experiencing homelessness through HOOP, Helping Our Own People, and the church maintains a community garden plot in partnership with St. Barnabas Catholic Church that grows produce for St. Anthony's Food Pantry.
Beyond Indianapolis, the church sponsors a local chapter of Bread for the World, hosting two Offerings of Letters events each year. The chapter has delivered hundreds of letters to lawmakers advocating policies to reduce hunger at home and abroad. The church also provides meeting space for the Indiana chapter of the U.S. Coast Guard Auxiliary and keeps a prayer connection with global ministry partners, including a long-standing relationship with a partner serving in Cairo.
Inside the building itself, Friedens opens its meeting rooms to a Boy Scout troop, a Cub Scout troop, three chapters of Alcoholics Anonymous, a chapter of Overeaters Anonymous, the Hill Valley Homeowners Association, and several other community groups, some free of charge and others for a modest fee.
The Just Peace Exploratory Team
Just Peace is a long-standing designation of the United Church of Christ that calls congregations to a public identity as justice-doing, peace-seeking communities. In mid-2020 the Friedens Council of Ministries approved the formation of a fourteen-member Just Peace Exploratory Team, led by Friedens disciple Adam Hayden and aligned under the Christian Education and Equipping Ministries teams. The team's two broad goals are to discern whether Friedens should adopt the Just Peace designation of the UCC and, if so, to bring a Just Peace Covenant before the congregation for adoption.
The team has hosted book studies on titles including Passionate for Justice: Ida B. Wells as Prophet for Our Time, See No Stranger, I'm Still Here, and Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You, has run a weekly "Peaceful Prose" feature in the newsletter, and has organized gatherings such as Saturday yoga sessions to benefit local peace and justice nonprofits and an asynchronous Lenten study of the Jewish history of the passion narrative led by New Testament scholar Amy-Jill Levine. The work is intentionally additive, growing out of Friedens' existing ministries rather than reshaping them.
Friedens also carries a strong presence into the wider church. The congregation sits in the Southeast Association of the Indiana-Kentucky Conference of the UCC. Members serve on the Conference Board of Directors, lead the Sri Lanka Partnership, sit on the Committee on Ministry, and co-chair the Conference's Anti-Racism Task Force. The senior pastor participates in a Conference Clergy Community of Practice.
A Campus That Welcomes the Neighborhood
The Friedens campus is sized for both congregation and community. The sanctuary seats about two hundred and is supported by a narthex that runs more than four thousand square feet, a chapel used for small intimate weddings and meditation gatherings, a parlor that works well for small meetings, and a suite of classrooms. Hayden Hall, the largest space at just over ten thousand square feet, is the most versatile, with a raised stage, floor to ceiling curtains, a half-court basketball area, and adjacent restrooms with showers. A full commercial kitchen, the Kendall Center, and a baseball and multi-use sports field round out the property.
Those rooms are available to rent for conferences, plays, luncheons, dinners, weddings, meetings, and other events. The church notes that latex balloons and latex gloves are not permitted anywhere on the grounds because of allergy concerns.
What Friedens Believes
Friedens frames belief less as a list of doctrines than as trust and allegiance. The church's statement of belief centers on Jesus and his way of life, a way the congregation names as grace, the Bible's word for unconditional love. Its mission statement commits to sharing the love of Christ with all people through a congregation empowered to inspire, train, and mobilize disciples. Its vision statement names a special calling to minister to children and youth in the community and a commitment to helping every member and friend of Friedens discover and use their spiritual gifts.
The Open and Affirming Covenant, adopted by the congregation, commits Friedens to extending an extravagant welcome to every person, including but not limited to every race, culture, ethnicity, economic status, marital status, education, background, age, ability, sexual orientation, gender identity and expression, and political belief, as a safe place to be authentic. The covenant is a continuing journey, not a destination, and Friedens names itself an Open and Affirming Congregation of the United Church of Christ.
Clergy and Staff
Friedens is served by two pastors. Marc Hayden serves as Senior Pastor, working alongside a Council of Ministry Leaders and bringing a team-based approach to ministry. Sarah Haas serves as a second pastor with particular focus on children's, youth, and family ministry, including the Conscious Caring Community gatherings for young adults. Kristin Petty directs the music program and the choirs. A technology team handles the live video broadcasts each Sunday.
Online Worship, Giving, and Staying Connected
The 10:30 Sunday service is broadcast live on the church's Live Worship page, and a video archive holds services going back several years, along with memorial services, celebration services, and holiday services. Recordings and bulletin notes include the Scripture for the day, key sermon ideas, and questions for personal reflection.
Giving is available online through the church's secure payment portal, by cash or check in the offering plate, by mail, or by setting up Friedens UCC as a payee through a personal banking site. Non-monetary donations are gathered throughout the year for the Weekender Backpack campaign and for partners such as Wheeler Mission. The church maintains a newsletter for those who want to follow the congregation's life between Sundays.