On the southwest edge of Colorado State University's campus in Fort Collins, Plymouth Congregational UCC has gathered Christians and seekers since 1903. From its building on West Prospect Road, just up the hill from the new CSU stadium and a short ride on the Spring Creek bike path, Plymouth is known for progressive Christian worship, a vibrant music program, an outdoor prayer labyrinth, and an ambitious slate of outreach ministries that work on homelessness, immigration, housing insecurity, and the wider world. Three commitments - Open and Affirming, Peace with Justice, and Immigrant-Welcoming - are written into the congregation's constitution.
A Heritage from the Sugar Beet Fields
The story of Plymouth begins with the sugar beet industry that shaped northern Colorado in the late nineteenth century. In 1903, German-Russian families working the beet fields in the Andersonville neighborhood on the edge of Fort Collins founded the German Evangelical Congregational Church. Within a few years they had built a sanctuary of their own, and the congregation eventually took the name Plymouth Congregational Church. As Fort Collins grew around it, the church moved with the city, and today the building on West Prospect Road houses a congregation whose members are current CSU students, professors, staff, university administrators, professors emeriti, alumni, and other intellectually curious people who value both the life of the mind and the life of the heart.
Plymouth's founders came to Colorado as refugees and immigrants themselves. That history continues to shape the church's identity and is written into its constitution in the form of an Immigrant Welcoming Congregation declaration. The congregation also keeps a History and Heritage Team that gathers stories, posters, and a timeline about the life of the church, and has produced a written history of how Plymouth came to be Open and Affirming.
Three Declarations of Welcome
Three written declarations, embedded in Plymouth's constitution, summarize who the church intends to be. Article V, the Open and Affirming Declaration adopted in 2001, affirms that all persons are created by God and equal in worth and dignity, and welcomes into full membership and participation persons of every race, language, age, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, ethnic origin, physical and mental ability, economic status, and nationality. Article VI, the Peace with Justice Declaration, commits Plymouth to a process of justice-making and peace-making that encourages open dialogue, reconciliation, constructive change, and nonviolence. Article VII, the Immigrant Welcoming Congregation Declaration adopted on January 14, 2018, names the German Evangelical Congregational origins of the church and declares Plymouth a congregation dedicated to facilitating respectful, compassionate welcome and inclusion of immigrants.
The three commitments are described in a single line at the top of Plymouth's main page: "We are an Open and Affirming, Peace with Justice, and Immigrant-Welcoming church."
Sunday Mornings at Plymouth
Sunday worship begins at 10 a.m. and centers on scripture, sermon, and vibrant music, with a progressive message rooted in the congregation's progressive Christian identity. Communion is celebrated on the first and third Sundays of each month. The first Sunday of every month is an intentionally multi-generational communion service in which the liturgical elements are written with children in mind.
From fall through spring, roughly the Sunday after Labor Day through the Sunday before Memorial Day, adult education for all ages is offered at 9 a.m. Coffee fellowship follows the service at 11:15 a.m. Plymouth describes its worship style as warm, welcoming, and vibrant, drawing on progressive biblical scholarship, fresh prayers, imagination, and community involvement while resting on a centuries-old heritage. The framing is direct: "Our faith is 2,000 years old...our thinking is not."
The Rev. Chris Gilmore serves as Plymouth's Designated-Term Minister. He grew up in Fort Collins, was confirmed at Plymouth in ninth grade, attended Chicago Theological Seminary, and was ordained at the church. His ministry has taken him to congregations in Winnetka, Illinois, Santa Cruz, California, Boulder, and Denver, and to the Boulder Shelter for the Homeless, before his return to Plymouth. He uses he/him pronouns.
Visitors can pick up a Digital Pew Card online, follow along with the weekly Worship Bulletin, and watch the livestream on YouTube. The livestream runs on Sundays and recordings stay available afterward; subscribing to the YouTube channel prompts a notification each time the church goes live.
Music at the Heart of Worship
Music is at the heart of Plymouth's worship. The Sunday morning experience typically includes the organ, hand bells, chimes, congregational song, and guest musicians, along with the Chancel Choir. The Plymouth Ringers handbell choir rings throughout the program year, and a Chancel Guild decorates the sanctuary. A band offers music in jazz, bluegrass, folk, contemplative, and Celtic idioms, and solos and small ensembles round out the seasons.
David Adkins serves as Bridge Director of Music, supported by Alicia Belgiovane as Bridge Accompanist. Adkins holds degrees from the University of Alabama at Birmingham, Samford University, and the University of Denver, and has served churches in Alabama, Florida, and Colorado since 1984. Belgiovane taught music in Gunnison public schools for twenty-eight years, served as Music Director at Crested Butte UCC, and has played for congregations across the country. Visitors who want to sing, ring, or play are encouraged to introduce themselves.
Children at the Center of Worship
Children are a vital part of Plymouth's worship. The congregation welcomes their giggles, wiggles, and cries, and offers a few practical supports so that the youngest members of the sanctuary can engage. Just outside the main sanctuary doors is a children's worship station stocked with worship aids, and at the left front of the sanctuary there is a Pray Ground stocked with books, coloring pages, and quiet toys for families to use during the service. Families are encouraged to sit near the front so children can see and stay focused.
Professional childcare is provided for children in kindergarten and younger during Sunday services, and the nursery operates as an open playroom for wiggly worshipers. Children in first grade or older who would like to be in the playroom are invited, with their families, to talk with Drew about becoming nursery helpers. The nursery is closed during the summer (June through August), and during the rest of the year children are always welcome in the sanctuary, the Fellowship Hall, or the nursery.
Sunday morning Christian formation for children runs September through May. After a Time for All Ages at the start of the service, children in kindergarten through fifth grade explore the morning's scripture through Faith Exploration on a Joyful Path, while younger children are invited to the nursery or the Pray Ground. Plymouth's teachers follow a detailed Child Care Handbook that covers drop-off and pick-up, health and safety, diaper-changing, allergies, and the two-caregiver rule that keeps both children and volunteers safe.
Drew Angotti, Director of Christian Formation, oversees the program. He joined Plymouth in August 2025 from The Community Church of Vero Beach, Florida, where he served as Director of Youth and Young Adult Ministries and Contemporary Worship Leader, and has previously held similar roles in Miami, Hartford, and Hudson, Ohio.
Soul Café for Middle and High School Youth
Middle school and high school youth gather most Sundays at Plymouth for a program the congregation calls Soul Café. After the Time for All Ages at about 10:15 a.m., youth move into a relaxed space to reflect on the morning's scripture, ask honest questions, and share their thoughts in an open and welcoming setting. As part of the program, participants help prepare and run the youth coffee cart after worship, practicing hospitality as an expression of faith in action while building community and belonging.
Middle and high school students also gather on alternating Sundays for lunch, games, and a devotion. Parents receive a weekly informational group text named CONNECT every Friday. Several times a year the youth travel together to La Foret Conference and Retreat Center in the Black Forest near Colorado Springs for retreats and summer camp run by committed volunteers from the Rocky Mountain Conference UCC, joining young people from across Colorado, Wyoming, and Utah.
Plymouth's youth also participate in Connected, an ecumenical collective of progressive youth ministries across northern Colorado that team up for lock-ins, laser tag, service trips, youth retreats, and spiritual formation. Most often Plymouth partners with First Congregational Church in Greeley and other UCC churches along the Front Range, and with First Presbyterian Church and First United Methodist Church in Fort Collins.
Our Whole Lives
Plymouth offers the UCC's Our Whole Lives (OWL) sexuality and spirituality program for kindergarteners through adults. The program is offered every two to three years for each age group, depending on the age spread. In the fall of 2025, OWL was offered for seventh and eighth graders, and older-adult OWL was offered jointly with Foothills Unitarian in 2024.
Learning Together as Adults
Adult formation at Plymouth rests on a sense of belonging, faithfulness, joyful curiosity, and servant leadership. On Sunday mornings during the academic year, three small Blessed Belonging groups gather at 9 a.m., each limited to about ten people, to develop closer relationships, engage in discussion, and reflect on Christian faith. Recent and current offerings include Dreaming Plymouth's Future, a circle for dreaming, listening, and discerning together; Gates of Grief, a gentle conversation about loss inspired by Francis Weller; and a six-week course on the Historical Jesus drawing on Marcus Borg's Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time.
A Centering Prayer group, a Women's Bible Study, and a Friday Morning Women's Faith and Life Discussion Group meet at other times during the week, and a Friday Morning Discussion Group gathers for broader topics.
The Wild Goose Pilgrims
On Wednesday mornings at 9 a.m. in the conference room, the Wild Goose Pilgrims gather for honest dialogue, scripture, self-reflection, and study. The name comes from the traditional Celtic image of the Holy Spirit as a wild goose rather than a peaceful dove, and the group carries on a tradition of pilgrimage as a spiritual practice. The current reading is John A. Sanford's Mystical Christianity: A Psychological Commentary on the Gospel of John.
Care in Body, Mind, and Spirit
Plymouth takes care of its people through three structured ministries. Stephen Ministry, first commissioned at the church in 2021, organizes a team of lay caregivers trained to provide high-quality, one-to-one, Christ-centered care to people going through life difficulties: grief, illness, job changes, the birth of a child, and other transitions. Care receivers meet weekly with a Stephen Minister for listening, care, prayer, encouragement, and emotional and spiritual support.
Faith Community Nurses are licensed registered nurses who practice holistic health for self, individuals, and the community using nursing knowledge combined with spiritual care. Their scope of practice is defined by the American Nurses Association, and they focus on the intentional care of the spirit, assisting members of the faith community and other faith-based organizations to maintain or regain wholeness in body, mind, and spirit.
A Congregational Visitors ministry within Calling & Caring keeps in touch with members who cannot easily attend services, and a Meal/Food Train Coordinator organizes meals for those in need of extra support. A Prayer Shawl Ministry wraps people in hand-knit shawls during good times and hard times.
A Labyrinth and a Memorial Garden on the Grounds
Beyond the sanctuary, Plymouth's grounds host a prayer labyrinth. The labyrinth is open to members of the congregation and the wider community for walking meditation and is one of the church's quiet offerings for spiritual practice.
The grounds also include a Memorial Garden available for cremated remains of Plymouth members. Advance Planning forms allow members to pre-arrange their funeral or memorial service and designate plans for the Memorial Garden and memorial gifts.
Hospitality for Families Without Homes
Faith Family Hospitality, a program of the Family Housing Network, hosts families experiencing homelessness in Fort Collins churches on a rotating basis. Plymouth is one of those host congregations, and the church's Outreach and Mission Board supports the program as one of the faces of Plymouth in the community. The Outreach and Mission Board works with more than a dozen ministry teams that address a wide range of local and international concerns, including Faith Family Hospitality, Immigration Ministry, Habitat for Humanity, McBackpack, Climate Action, the Missions Marketplace, Crop Walk, and Youth for Change.
Helping CSU Students Find Home
Each August since 2021, Plymouth has joined with Lutheran Campus Ministry's Student Housing Security Initiative, CSU's Office of International Programs, and the Fort Collins International Center to help welcome international and housing-insecure students to campus. The collaboration grew out of a recognition that four in ten CSU students struggle with housing insecurity at some point during their undergraduate years.
The HOME-Y Welcome Event gathers new and gently-used household items from Plymouth members and the wider community, fills the Fellowship Hall with tables of donations, and invites hundreds of students to come select what they need to set up a functional, comfortable apartment. Volunteers drive students and their new household goods back to their apartments at Rams Village, and any leftovers are packed up for housing-focused non-profits and thrift shops. Plymouth's name is now recognized by hundreds of students of many faiths and from many parts of the world.
Walking with Immigrants
Rooted in its immigrant heritage, Plymouth runs an Immigration Ministry that supports immigrant members of the Fort Collins area. The church partners with the Rocky Mountain Immigrant Advocacy Network and the Interfaith Solidarity and Accompaniment Coalition, and the Immigrant Welcoming Congregation Declaration in its constitution names this commitment explicitly.
From Fort Collins to East Jerusalem
Each year around the Sunday before Thanksgiving, Plymouth hosts the Missions Marketplace, an alternative holiday market where more than fifteen organizations and projects focused on families from countries including Afghanistan, Guatemala, Kenya, and Syria share their stories and offer opportunities to support their work. Visitors can choose gifts for their loved ones from handcrafted items and fair-trade foods, with proceeds supporting programs that promote education, women's empowerment, and environmental sustainability.
Since 2000 Plymouth has also supported two students each year at Rawdat El-Zuhur School in East Jerusalem. The school began in 1952 as a program founded by Elizabeth Nazir to shelter abused and impoverished girls and grew after the 1967 war into a formal elementary school and kindergarten serving 221 Palestinian girls and boys, both Christian and Muslim.
Care for Creation
A Climate Action Ministry carries Plymouth's environmental commitments into the congregation's work and witness. Members of the Outreach and Mission Board and the Climate Action team meet regularly and have helped Plymouth to think about its buildings, its grounds, and the wider community as part of a single creation. Plymouth is also part of the Fort Collins Area Interfaith Council, working across lines of religious tradition on local justice issues.
Music and the Wider Community
Off the Hook Arts, a Plymouth ministry partner, now offers Little Larks: Music for Little Ones for children ages zero to five on Tuesdays at Plymouth, taught by Cathy Correa in a bilingual, Orff-Schulwerk-based class for children and caregivers. Scholarships are available.
Rites of Passage and Shared Spaces
Plymouth hosts weddings and funerals for members and non-members, and the church's sanctuary is open to all couples regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity. Wedding and funeral brochures, costs, and advance-planning forms are posted online, and the clergy are available to discuss plans with anyone considering a service at the church.
Beyond its own ministries, Plymouth opens its building to nonprofit and religious groups who need meeting space. The building rental process is managed through the church's Administrative Assistant, and the parking gates and rooms are scheduled through an online booking calendar.
Finding Your Place
Plymouth has dozens of ways to volunteer: greeters, liturgists, video and sound techs, deacons, coffee helpers, and flower arrangers among them. A short online survey helps newcomers identify new ways to serve, and the resulting list suggests ten possibilities with details and a contact person for each. After taking the survey, visitors are encouraged to browse the full list of volunteer opportunities, talk with a staff member, or wait to be contacted.
Beyond formal volunteering, Plymouth runs a Men's Circle that carries on the work of Fr. Richard Rohr and the Illuman group, a Plymouth Social Club for Gen X and Millennials that meets at different restaurants, a Fellowship of the Grape for members 21 and up that gathers at members' homes, a Fellowship That Transforms for deeper discussions after church, and a Spirit Yoga class at 11 a.m. on Tuesdays for sixty minutes of centering practice.
A Wider Family
Plymouth Congregational UCC is one of the congregations of the United Church of Christ, a denomination formed by different traditions coming together in 1957. Plymouth is part of the Rocky Mountain Conference UCC, the same regional body that runs the Outdoor Ministries at La Foret Conference and Retreat Center in the Black Forest of Colorado Springs.
The UCC's Statement of Faith, in the form of a doxology, expresses the congregation's progressive Christian convictions. Plymouth also embraces the UCC's commitment that "God is still speaking," and values the freedom of individual believers to interpret the Bible under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. The congregation frames its own convictions in the words: "We see creeds as historic testimonies of faith, rather than tests of faith."
In its welcome to all, the missionary team at ISAAC, the Interfaith Solidarity and Accompaniment Coalition, joins Plymouth with other Fort Collins congregations in accompaniment work. Plymouth's membership in ISAAC and its work with the Fort Collins Area Interfaith Council keep it connected with the wider interfaith community of northern Colorado.
Stewardship and Giving
Plymouth accepts gifts online, by credit and debit card, by ACH transfer, by Venmo (@PlymouthUCC), by PayPal, by Google Pay, sometimes by Apple Pay, and by text message to 970.426.0279. Members and friends can pledge online, set up recurring giving, give stock, or include Plymouth in their estate plans through the Plymouth Congregational Church Legacy Society, a group of more than sixty members and friends who support Plymouth annually and have committed a portion of their accumulated assets to the church at the end of their lives or sooner through planned gifts. Designated areas for planned gifts include the Wider Mission of the UCC, Community Service and Outreach, Infrastructure Improvements, Christian Formation, and Worship, Music, and Art.
The church's main number is 970-482-9212. The front office is open Tuesday through Thursday from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. The Rev. Chris Gilmore is available by appointment Tuesday through Thursday most weeks for pastoral conversations, and in a pastoral emergency callers can key in the pastor's extension at the main number to reach him directly. Recorded sermons are available through the Plymouth podcast and on the Plymouth YouTube channel, and online pledges and recurring gifts can be made through the online giving portal.