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  • Special Easter Offering 2026

     

    “It was one of those March days when the sun shines hot and the wind blows cold: when it is summer in the light, and winter in the shade.”

     –Charles Dickens.

    Dear Members and Friends of First Congregational Church:

    Hello from your Outreach team! It’s that time of year where we wonder if Spring will ever arrive. Such dramatic seasons are endemic to New England–the place we are lucky to call home. However, imagine this sense of impermanence in family, home and work. What if even food was as mutable as this spring season?

    For children, adolescents and young adults in foster care system, a sense of permanence is invaluable. This is why in 1855, Caroline Plummer generously bequeathed more than $23,000 for the founding of a “farm school of reform for boys,” on Salem’s Winter Island. Caroline understood the challenges of providing for children after the death of her parents and she had to care for her siblings. The home was constructed in the 1860s and served as a boys’ orphanage with residents aged five to 18 attending school, church, and work.

    As the years passed, and in consideration of emerging data on child psychology, the reform school model was changed to a home for boys. For decades, Caroline Plummer’s commitment to youth was maintained through dedicated board members, administrators, and staff. By 2012, Plummer was serving boys and girls in residential and community-based settings.

    Today, the organization is known as Plummer Youth Promise and they recently completed a new residential building on their campus at Winter Island. Residents now have a separate building with their own bedrooms and single occupancy bathrooms to provide more privacy, focus, and undisturbed sleep.

    As part of the campus construction, the original house has also been renovated as a space to continue to house the administrative offices, classrooms, and to add a very special apartment for the residents’ visiting families (families were previously housed in hotels). Plummer Youth Promise will hold a ribbon-cutting ceremony to celebrate this restoration on May 2.

    For our 2026 Easter Offering, FCC Winchester Outreach Committee would like to provide furniture for several rooms in this new apartment, including a seating room, kitchen, two bedrooms and bathroom. We are setting a goal of $10,000 to achieve this goal.

    We hope we each and as a congregation will respond from the depth of our own faith and commitment to long-term solutions to challenging social issues and consider helping support Plummer Youth Promise furnish their campus apartment for visiting family of foster children. If you can donate, please note “Easter Offering” in the memo line of your check, Venmo, or electronic donation.

    Psalm 68:6 “God Settles the Lonely in Families”

    Your Outreach team:  Karen Bellacosa, Laurie Galica, Betsy Goodell, Rev. Maeve Kieran Hammond, Marisa Lafferty, Larisa Lindsay, Katie Shanahan, and Jennifer Uzdavinis.

     

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For decades, we have celebrated our LGBTQIA+ siblings and their inclusion in all parts of our worship and congregational life. In 2001, we became Open & Affirming through the UCC, meaning we are liturgically and theologically committed to a public covenant of welcome.