A 340-Year-Old Open and Affirming Congregation on Watson Street
On a quiet block a short walk from downtown Nashua, Pilgrim Congregational Church has stood at 4 Watson Street since 1956, and its predecessor congregation has been gathering in Nashua since 1685. The United Church of Christ congregation built its life around a single sentence that runs through almost every piece of its work: extravagant welcome. Members describe it as a place where the cry of a baby or a word from a toddler is met with joy, where the Holy Spirit is given room to move during worship, and where the work of the church spills out into the wider city through a seven-room thrift shop, a long-running preschool, and an unusually long list of community partnerships.
The church belongs to the New Hampshire Conference of the United Church of Christ, voted in 2018 to become an Open and Affirming congregation, and is currently led by its Designated Term Pastor, Rev. Judith Bryant, known to the congregation as Pastor Judie. Music Director Brian Durkin shapes a blended worship program that pairs traditional hymns with newer ones, and Office Manager Kathy Crouse has greeted callers from the same desk since November of 1992.
Three Centuries on Watson Street
The great-grandparent of Pilgrim Congregational Church UCC was founded in 1685, making it one of the oldest continuing churches in Nashua. The current building dates to 1956, but the congregation's sense of rootedness is older. Members have voted, prayed, marched, and fed people through more than three centuries of New England life, and they continue to write new chapters on the same soil.
That long memory shapes how Pilgrim talks about its present. Its Vision Statement names Pilgrim as a place that will be known as a vital, active community of extravagant welcome, faith, and spirit. Its Mission Statement, written to be lived out as much as read, commits the church to accepting all no matter where you are on life's journey, joyfully sharing love, time, talents, and resources, and nurturing faith and faithfulness through worship, study, and fellowship within and beyond its walls.
An Open and Affirming Covenant Since 2018
In 2018, the congregation formally adopted an Open and Affirming Covenant. The covenant reads, in part, that Pilgrim Congregational Church, United Church of Christ, of Nashua, NH, is committed to being an Open and Affirming Congregation and a loving and accepting Christian community. The welcome it describes extends to people of every sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, marital status, family structure, mental or physical ability, cultural or ethnic background, socio-economic status, and age, from birth to a hundred plus.
This is not only a written statement. The church takes it into the streets through its Outreach Ministry, which coordinates participation in the Nashua Pride Parade and staffs a booth along the route, and through its long relationships with organizations that serve people across the spectrum of human need.
What Sunday Morning Looks Like
Pilgrim's hybrid Sunday worship service begins at 10:00 a.m. and typically lasts about an hour. The service begins and ends with music, includes hymns, prayer, Bible readings, and a sermon from the pastor, and collects an offering. Members describe the atmosphere as relaxed and welcoming, and the pastor sometimes includes a mission moment, a guest speaker, a children's time, or a baptism in the flow of the morning. The congregation leaves room for the Spirit, in their words.
On the first Sunday of every month, the congregation celebrates Communion. Pilgrim practices an open table: everyone is welcome to receive the bread and the cup, which contains grape juice.
Children are welcome in worship. Across from the sanctuary, a parlor is set up with toys for younger children, and individual art-supply trays are available for older children who want to draw and color while sitting with their parents. Visitors can come as they are. Dress ranges from casual to dressy, and the only thing the church asks anyone to bring is themselves.
In Person and on Zoom
The church holds worship both in its sanctuary on Watson Street and on Zoom, and the same hour works for both. The Zoom link is shared on the church's virtual worship page, and participants are asked to mute their microphones when not actually speaking to the congregation. Worship resources are also posted so anyone following along at home can follow the prayers, readings, and hymns.
Ample free parking is available on the church grounds. Designated handicapped parking spaces sit adjacent to both main entrances of the building.
Pastor Judie and the Team
Pastor Judie's time at Pilgrim began on October 13, 2020, seven months into the COVID-19 pandemic. She arrived as the intentional interim pastor and led worship on Zoom while the building was closed, getting to know the congregation through screens. When the doors reopened, she was there. On July 1, 2023, the congregation called her to serve as its Designated Term Pastor.
Pastor Judie lives in Chelmsford, MA, with her husband, Geoff, and their two dogs, Bailey and Seamus. Together they have three adult children and two grandchildren. Before Pilgrim, she served for seventeen years as Director of Christian Education at a UCC church in Chelmsford, then as Associate Pastor for Congregational Life at the same church, then as settled pastor of a UCC church in Mont Vernon, NH, and as a sabbatical pastor in Lowell, MA. She holds a BA in Sociology from Salem State College and an MDiv from Andover Newton Theological School. God's vision of a world at peace, she has written, is her vision too.
Music Director Brian Durkin brings a long career in church music to Pilgrim. He studied music at Bridgewater State College and spent more than fifteen years with Comcast Business Services before joining the church. He previously served as music director at Riverside Congregational Church, where he led a small congregation of about twenty-five, selected hymns to match the liturgy, and learned to play a ninety-year-old Frazee pipe organ. He has sung with choirs, played for masses, weddings, funerals, and life celebrations, and brings a particular affection for older hymns of spiritual music.
Kathy Crouse has worked in the Pilgrim Church office since November of 1992. She has held the titles of Office Administrator, Secretary, and now Office Manager. People who call or visit the office tend to mention her bright smile and pleasant greeting. Her interests include quilting and music, and she is the steady point of contact for most church business.
The Choir, the Organ, and the Hymns
The Music Ministry at Pilgrim sees music as a wonderful gift of God and a powerful companion to preaching. The program pairs traditional hymns with newer Christian-related hymns that match the weekly Holy Scripture and the holidays of the church year. New singers are invited to join the group at any level, and instrumentalists are welcome too. The aim is to build a strong community of singers and guest musicians who serve the needs of the church and bring its music out into the wider community.
Brian Durkin's office line is the same as the church's main number. Anyone interested in singing or playing with the Music Ministry is encouraged to call.
The Thrift Shop at the Heart of Mission
The Pilgrim Church Thrift Shop, which opened on October 1, 1980, is a small institution inside a small institution. It started in three small rooms. There are now seven large rooms to browse through. The shop is open from 10:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. on Wednesdays and Fridays, mid September through mid June, and accepts clothing for babies, children, teens, and adults, plus jewelry, shoes, boots, purses, household items, dishes, pots and pans, bakeware, sheet sets, towels, blankets, comforters, holiday decorations, baby items, house decorations, quilts, glassware, and small furniture items. A limit of fifteen consignment items is accepted per week, with terms of fifty percent to the owner and fifty percent to the shop when sold.
The shop's exterior door is on the north side of the building and is clearly marked. Inside, the proceeds do not sit in a drawer. They fund most of the church's missions and ministries, and the shop itself provides low-cost and even no-cost clothing for people in need. Its work ripples outward into a long list of community partners: Girls on the Run shoe fundraisers, the Iglesia Movimiento Misionero in Hudson, Catie's Closet, the Humane Society Animal Hospital of Nashua, the Southern New Hampshire Rescue Mission Hope Center for Women, and others. The Thrift Shop also provides financial support for local charities, sponsorship of community events, donations of goods and services, and volunteer opportunities for community members.
Little Pilgrim School
Little Pilgrim School, an early childhood program that operates out of the church building, has its own community of families who pass through Pilgrim's halls and classrooms. The school is a separate site that uses Pilgrim's space, and it extends the church's reach into the lives of young children and their parents throughout the week.
Feeding the Spirit
On Thursday mornings at 10:30, the Feeding the Spirit group gathers at the church. The format is deliberately simple: tasty snacks, friendly chats, and inspirational videos. All are welcome. The group exists to deepen Christian education in a low-key setting, and it pairs naturally with the church's broader commitment to feeding both the spirit and the body of those living in a sometimes-lonely world.
Beloved Community
Beloved Community gatherings meet regularly at Pilgrim. The phrase is borrowed from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s vision of a community that is nonviolent, just, and merciful, that values true peace, and that manifests God's love in the world. Pilgrim has woven this language into its self-understanding, treating it less as a program and more as a habit of mind. Pilgrims talk about Beloved Community the way some churches talk about discipleship: as something they are working toward in every conversation, every meeting, and every decision.
Bible Study and Faith Formation
Education and faith formation at Pilgrim is largely provided through lay and pastoral leadership of Bible studies and other adult education activities that expand the congregation's understanding of Christianity, especially as practiced within the United Church of Christ. Youth educational activities are offered when needed. Studying together is treated as one of the ordinary rhythms of congregational life rather than a special event.
Walking Alongside Those Who Grieve
Two of the church's most distinctive ongoing ministries sit squarely in the territory of grief and loss.
The Greater Nashua Widows and Widowers Social Support Group, sometimes shortened to GNWWSSG, has met at Pilgrim since October 2021. The group is for people of all ages in Southern New Hampshire who have suffered the loss of a spouse and meets once a month on the third Saturday at 2:00 p.m. The format is introductions, a specific topic for discussion, and time for light refreshments and socializing, sometimes with a guest speaker. It is explicitly a social group, not a dating group and not a bereavement group, and provides a confidential space where widows and widowers can share resources and friendship.
The Survivors of Suicide Loss Support Group at Pilgrim meets on the second Wednesday of each month from 6:30 to 8:00 p.m. for adults, and on the first Wednesday of each month from 6:00 to 7:00 p.m. for teens ages 12 to 17. The adult group is facilitated by Kerry Arseneaux and her mother, Debbie Peters, both of whom lost a son and brother, Paul, to suicide fifteen years ago. The teen group is led by local survivors of suicide loss with experience in child and adolescent psychology, peer support, and mental health therapy. Anyone who has lost someone to suicide is welcome at any meeting, no matter where they are in their grief.
Family Promise and Meals for the Unhoused
Since 2001, Family Promise of Southern New Hampshire has worked to give families experiencing homelessness the tools they need to achieve sustainable independence, with a success rate of more than eighty percent. Pilgrim prepares and serves meals twice a month at a Family Promise shelter, and the church is part of a wider effort that supports single mothers, single fathers, two-parent families, grandparents raising grandchildren, and veterans who do not qualify for other programs.
The church donates to the Nashua Soup Kitchen and Shelter, supports refugee resettlement, and partners with the Granite State Organizing Project. The CROP Hunger Walk, organized through Church World Service, is one of Pilgrim's regular community fundraisers, and church members walk together to raise money for hunger relief locally and around the world.
Theater, Pride, and Friends Across the Ages
Friends Across the Ages, with its affiliated Community Theater Troupe called FAACTT, connects all ages but especially young adults in greater Nashua to adults at Pilgrim in a spirit of fun, fellowship, and the kind of drama one performs on stage. The troupe is open to all Nashua residents age 18 and up and needs actors, a stage manager, an assistant director, set designers, costume makers, makeup artists, publicists, and anyone else willing to help. It is an all-volunteer group that presents shows to the public free of charge, performed at Pilgrim Congregational Church.
Pilgrim's Outreach Ministry also coordinates participation in the Nashua Pride Parade, where members walk and run a booth, and in the annual CROP Walk.
Prayer Shawls and Pastoral Care
The Prayer Shawl Ministry lovingly creates handmade shawls for anyone in need of comfort, hope, or healing. Each shawl is knit or crocheted with prayers woven into every stitch, then blessed by the congregation before being shared. Whether someone is facing illness, grief, transition, or simply needs to feel wrapped in God's love, the shawls offer a tangible reminder that they are held in prayer and surrounded by a caring community.
Pastoral care at Pilgrim extends through the Congregational Care Ministry, which organizes and supports church events with food, celebrates milestones in the lives of members, staff, and the church, and runs seasonal events like the Green Auction for St. Patrick's Day. The Diaconate supports worship by ushering, assisting as liturgists, and advising the pastor on all things related to providing a meaningful Christian worship experience.
The Annual Heritage Fair
The Heritage Fair has been a Nashua tradition for more than 120 years. Each year, volunteers transform the church into a lively marketplace featuring themed gift baskets, homemade baked goods and candies, holiday crafts, handmade items, plants and greenery ready for gifting, and a special open-house day for the Thrift Shop. The fair is more than a fundraiser. Proceeds support special projects that preserve Pilgrim's historic building and strengthen its ministries, and the day has become an annual reunion for many in the wider Nashua community.
Building, Accessibility, and Visiting
The church building at 4 Watson Street was built in 1956, and members have updated it with accessibility in mind. The worship service, meeting spaces, and Fellowship Hall are accessible to all. There is a ramp as well as stairs at both entrances to the building, with wheelchair-accessible spaces in the sanctuary and accessible restrooms. A gender-neutral restroom is available as well. Designated handicapped parking sits adjacent to both main entrances.
Visitors can arrive a few minutes before 10:00 a.m. on Sunday morning, park in the lot, and walk into a service that begins and ends with music and lasts about an hour. Anyone who prefers to stay home can join the same service on Zoom using the link posted on the church's virtual worship page. There is no need to be a member to attend, no need to dress in any particular way, and no need to bring anything but oneself.
Giving can be done online through the church's secure payment portal, mailed to the church at 4 Watson St., Nashua, NH 03064, or placed in the offering plate during Sunday worship. Questions and prayer requests can be sent to the church office at office@pilgrimchurchnashua.org or to Pastor Judie at pastor@pilgrimchurchnashua.org. The Thrift Shop has its own address at thriftshop@pilgrimchurchnashua.org.
The church's newsletter, Pilgrim Happenings, keeps members and friends in touch with what is happening on Watson Street and beyond, and the church maintains an active Facebook page and YouTube channel in addition to its Zoom-based worship.
A Place at the Table
What holds Pilgrim together is a working theology of welcome. The congregation has chosen to describe its life with a single word - extravagant - and then to put that word into practice through what is arguably the most extensive thrift-shop ministry of any small church in Nashua, a long-running preschool, two distinct grief support groups, a theater troupe, a Thursday morning fellowship group, and an Open and Affirming covenant that names every kind of difference the law allows it to name. The Sunday service is simple, the music is sung, and the table is open. For a church that has been gathering in Nashua since 1685, this is what continuing looks like.