Whoever You Are, Wherever You Are on Life's Journey
On a leafy stretch of Academy Road in southwest Durham, Pilgrim United Church of Christ has been a faith home for generations of people who describe their congregation as Christ-centered, justice-seeking, and intentionally inclusive. The church's signature greeting, displayed across its welcome materials, sets the tone: "Whoever you are, wherever you are on life's journey, you are welcome here." Visitors arriving on a Sunday morning will find a sanctuary of all ages, from babies to grandparents, in everything from shorts to suits to the occasional ballerina tutu.
Pilgrim identifies as Open and Affirming, racial justice seeking, and creation loving. Members describe themselves as "holy boundary pushers," reflecting what they call Jesus' love for all, compassion for the hurting, and advocacy for the oppressed. The congregation is a member of the United Church of Christ, a denomination with a long history of progressive firsts in American Christianity.
Worship on Sunday Mornings
Worship is the heart of life at Pilgrim. Sunday services begin at 10:30 am and are followed by fellowship time at 11:30 am, when the congregation gathers over Equal Exchange coffee to catch up and welcome newcomers. The service is livestreamed on YouTube each week, with bulletins, hymns, and announcements posted online for those joining from home.
The sanctuary is a quiet, beautiful space, and the building is fully ADA accessible. For those who would like support during worship, Pilgrim offers wireless hearing devices, large-print bulletins, digital bulletins, and reading glasses. A separate, quiet space next to the sanctuary is also available for those who may be struggling and prefer to worship in a different setting. Masks are optional.
Children are always welcome in the sanctuary. One Sunday each month, Sunday school is intentionally not held so that young people can be more fully included in worship. As Pilgrim's leaders put it, "the sounds of children are welcome and remind us and show them that they are equal members of our church community."
A Progressive Music Ministry
Music is integral to Pilgrim's liturgy. The music ministry, led by Music Director Ali Carnes and Accompanist Kyle Ballantine (a Cleveland Institute of Music-trained organist with more than two decades of church music experience), draws on a wide repertoire. Congregants can expect everything from Medieval and Renaissance motets to high Romantic choral works, spirituals, protest songs of the 1960s, and contemporary music. Pilgrim welcomes music from all faith traditions and sees music itself as a form of theology.
While the choir is the backbone of the program, the ministry is intentionally open and collaborative. Individual congregants and friends of Pilgrim regularly share their musical gifts, and the program has long experimented with recording and outdoor concerts, including a pandemic-era outdoor summer series that helped keep the community connected.
Children, Youth, and Our Whole Lives
Pilgrim places great care in its work with the youngest members of the community. The nursery welcomes babies through three-year-olds, while Sunday school is open to children ages three to ten. The classroom uses a one-room model, with older children often serving as helper teachers alongside adults. Sunday school runs on the second through fifth Sundays of the school year, and a summer Vacation Bible School adds a season of fellowship and fun.
The church offers snacks that are typically dairy, gluten, and peanut free, and caregivers share important information with parents. All nursery staff are background-checked and trained in SafeChurch guidelines. The nursery team includes Lead Nursery Teacher Gabriel Chapman, along with Jill Foote and Michelle Hill.
Youth meet about twice a month under the direction of Youth Director Felix Flanders. Depending on the season, programming may include confirmation, Our Whole Lives (OWL) classes, church projects, local or international missions, or outings in and around Durham. Pilgrim has built a relationship with the youth group at Umstead Park UCC, and the two congregations have enjoyed everything from mini-golf and escape rooms to marching together in the Durham Pride parade.
Our Whole Lives, a comprehensive sexuality education program developed in partnership between the UCC and the Unitarian Universalist Association, has been a particular point of pride. Pilgrim launched OWL for its high schoolers during the pandemic and has continued offering it for middle schoolers. The church has also run OWL interchurch projects with neighboring congregations.
Adults Young and Old: Pub Theology, Study, and Conversation
Pilgrim takes seriously the idea that faith formation is lifelong, and its adult programming is both varied and intellectually engaged. The most visible weekly gathering may be Pub Theology, which meets at 6:30 pm on Mondays at Namu, a Durham restaurant and bar on Durham-Chapel Hill Boulevard. The format is simple: beverage, conversation, and God. Pilgrims and friends come with questions, doubts, and curiosity, and leave having explored what it means to live faithfully in the world. The group is open to church-shy friends and to people of any or no religious tradition.
Other recurring offerings include:
- Mondays Online Meditation, a weekly Zoom session guided by Nancy Chew.
- The Pilgrim Study Group (formerly the Group on Aging), which meets Wednesdays in the church parlor under the leadership of retired UCC pastor Jim Smalley. Recent reading has included Joan Chittister's Welcome to the Wisdom of the World, with discussions spanning Hindu, Buddhist, Jewish, Christian, and Islamic traditions.
- Seasonal Bible Series, including Advent and Lenten series, with topics ranging from in-depth Bible study to interfaith dialogue and intersectional justice reading groups. Recent series have used resources from Sanctified Art, including Tell Me Something Good and What Do You Fear? Insisting on Hope this Advent.
- Book groups, including a fall study of Bishop Mariann Budde's How We Learn to Be Brave led by Rev. Greyson Kentopp on Zoom.
- Labyrinth meditation, hosted in Pilgrim's outdoor brick labyrinth.
- Project and Craft Nights, held on first Fridays in even months.
Several groups serve specific communities within the church. Proudly Together is a space for LGBTQ members to enjoy food, fellowship, and mutual support. The Pilgrim Auxiliary, affiliated with the Eastern North Carolina Association and the UCC Southern Conference, meets September through May on the first Monday of the month in the Fellowship Hall for devotions, learning, and seasonal projects, and is open to all ages. A Caregiver Support Group meets on the second and fourth Mondays on Zoom.
Justice as a Way of Life
Pilgrim's identity is inseparable from its work in the wider Durham community and beyond. The congregation is part of Durham CAN, a local organizing effort that has brought Pilgrims to candidate forums and legislative actions on issues like housing, gun violence, wages, health care costs, and immigration. Each year on the third Sunday of the month, Penny Sunday collects loose change to fund a meal prepared and served by Pilgrim at Urban Ministries of Durham, an organization that works to fight homelessness and hunger.
Other justice commitments include:
- A Little Free Pantry on the church grounds, periodically restocked through congregational drives.
- Support for Meals on Wheels Durham.
- A Race+ Equity Team, which meets regularly on Zoom and helped the congregation live into its anti-racist commitments.
- A Creation Justice Team, focused on environmental stewardship. The church has installed solar panels and created a pollinator garden.
- Annual participation in the Durham CROP Hunger Walk.
- Tutoring and mentoring of bilingual students through local partners.
- Walking alongside formerly incarcerated individuals as they reenter community life.
For those experiencing grief, Pilgrim helps publicize and supports Growing Thru Grief, a free, confidential support and education program that meets Tuesdays at St. Paul's Lutheran Church, drawing on resources from Duke Hospice and Bereavement and other local clergy.
A History Rooted in Justice
Pilgrim's story begins long before it became a United Church of Christ. The congregation traces its roots to 1794, when James O'Kelly dissented from the Methodist Church and founded a body simply called the Christian Church, devoted to restoring the simplicity of the early Christian community and opposing authoritarian church government. O'Kelly's denunciation of slavery drew many African Americans to Christian churches across the South. Pilgrim still commemorates this history each spring with a service at Eno River State Park, near the site of O'Kelly's original chapel.
In Durham, the Christian Church settled at the corner of Gregson Street and Main Street in 1908. In 1931, the Christian churches merged with the Congregational churches, and in 1961 the congregation voted to join the United Church of Christ, taking the name Pilgrim.
Three years later, in 1964, Pilgrim's pastor baptized an African American child, prompting a congregational vote to integrate worship, Sunday School, and other congregational activities. The vote came shortly after Durham had desegregated its restaurants, stores, movie theaters, and motels, but while the city was still struggling with school desegregation. In 1967 the congregation moved to its present home at 3011 Academy Road.
In 1984 Pilgrim helped launch a pioneering Exchange Program with two local African American UCC congregations, Zion Temple and Mt. Calvary. Members of each congregation spent time as "sister" congregations, attending and serving at one another's churches for three months, before the three bodies began gathering for joint worship, picnics, offerings, and community service. In 1999 Pilgrim adopted a Welcoming Statement and became an Open and Affirming congregation. The church has since adopted covenants on racial healing, creation justice, and Open and Affirming ministry.
Pastors, Staff, and Leadership
Pilgrim is served by a small, dedicated staff. Rev. Melinda Keenan Wood, who goes by Pastor Lindy, has been Pilgrim's Senior Pastor since September 2017. Ordained in the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) tradition in 2000, she previously served a Disciples congregation in Orlando, Florida, and has also served in residence at Chicago Theological Seminary and the Florida Center for Theological Studies. She holds a Master of Divinity from the University of Chicago, an MBA from Loyola University Chicago, and a BA in French and Spanish from Indiana University. She currently serves as a trustee for Disciple Divinity House at the University of Chicago.
Rev. Greyson Kentopp, the Associate Minister for Faith Formation, grew up in North Carolina and first connected with Pilgrim as a ministerial intern while an undergraduate at NC State. He holds a Master of Divinity from Yale Divinity School, where his studies centered on liberation theologies and creation justice. Before returning to Pilgrim, he served at the Los Angeles LGBT Center, providing housing case management to low-income LGBT seniors, and was ordained at First Congregational Church of Los Angeles.
Felix Flanders, Pilgrim's Youth Director, has been part of the congregation for more than nine years. A former educator with seventeen years of experience working with learners from preschool through adult, she previously served as Pilgrim's Director of Christian Education and Formation from 2019 to 2025. She is now pursuing a master's degree in social work at UNC while continuing in her part-time youth role. Ali Carnes leads the music program, and Kyle Ballantine serves as accompanist. The office is run by Hannah Hansard, a writer and archivist who came to Pilgrim from Bethany UCC in Montpelier, Vermont.
In keeping with UCC polity, Pilgrim is a congregational church, governed by elected boards and officers who establish and supervise its policies and programs. The Church Council, Board of Trustees, and Board of Christian Education are elected by the congregation, and leadership transitions are marked each year with an installation service.
Baptism, Communion, and the Sacraments
Pilgrim celebrates both sacraments of the United Church of Christ. Communion is open to all and is celebrated in worship, often on the first Sunday of the month. The church's primary baptismal tradition is infant baptism, but Pilgrim also offers confirmation and discipleship classes for adolescents and believer baptism for adults. Baptisms are typically performed in the context of worship, as a personal and community celebration.
A Building That Welcomes the Whole Community
The single-level main floor of Pilgrim's building, with its accessible entryways and a brick labyrinth on an outdoor patio, has made the church a popular rental home for community concerts, dances, weddings, memorials, scout meetings, tutoring, art meet-ups, music lessons, co-working, and support groups. Spaces available for rent include the Fellowship Hall (which can seat up to sixty with a projector and full kitchen), six classrooms, two medium outside patios, a small covered side patio, the sanctuary, and the choir room. With multiple rooms used together, the building can accommodate groups of 150 or more, and there is parking for forty cars with advance planning. Inquiries about rentals can be sent to the church office.
Open and Affirming, Then and Now
Becoming an Open and Affirming congregation in 1999 was a turning point in Pilgrim's life, and the church has continued to mark and live into that identity. Each fall, members and friends march together in the Durham Pride parade, often in partnership with Refuge UCC. A Pride Sunday storytelling service in October gathers LGBTQIA+ Pilgrims to share their stories, accompanied by a timeline and oral history project. The church's Open and Affirming covenant is publicly posted, and a Proudly Together group sustains fellowship and mutual support among LGBTQ members year-round.
How to Connect
Sunday worship begins at 10:30 am at 3011 Academy Road, Durham, NC 27707, with fellowship to follow. Office hours are Tuesday through Friday, 9:00 am to 2:00 pm. The office can be reached at 919-489-1381 or puccdurham@gmail.com. The weekly Pilgrims Progress newsletter is the easiest way to stay in touch, and Pilgrim maintains an active presence on Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube. Services stream live at 10:30 am each Sunday, with a quiet worship space, large-print bulletins, hearing devices, and a fully accessible building ready to welcome anyone who comes through the door.