Welcome to SecondFirst Church! …where we seek to energize downtown Rockford and beyond with God’s grace. I’m so glad you are reading this and I really hope to meet you in person. People look for churches for different reasons and come to us in different seasons. This may be a season you want to serve and it may be a season you need to be served. This may be a time you want to be known by a community or a time you desire personal time with God. Wherever you fall on those continuums, you are welcome here!
It is our hope to share God’s grace to our neighborhood and the wider Rockford Community. So often we are taught (and so easily believe) that God’s love is contained within a box of rules, a set or doctrines or even a way of being super cool. When in actuality the Bible tells us of God’s radical love made known in Jesus Christ that sets us free to live life abundantly.
It is our hope to extend God’s grace to all of God’s children (all people) as a worshiping community diverse in gender, race, culture, sexual orientation and class – for we learn the most and come closest to who God intended us to be not when we gather with like-minded like-positioned people but when we help one another expand and grown; when we challenge one another to consider new possibilities.
It is our hope to be a theologically and politically diverse people, for God’s love is big enough, God’s embrace is wide enough to include us all who are earnestly seeking God’s Truth – Truth that once all is revealed we will clearly see and know. We do not desire to tell people what or how to believe. We desire to grow together in faith and trust the Holy Spirit to guide us.
Whoever you are, whatever you believe, come join us as we celebrate the risen Christ, try to follow God in service to one another and seek justice for Rockford and the world. God is one, and we desire to align ourselves with the One who created it all and yearns to love, cherish and lead us. This Christian life is most easily sought not alone but in community. So come join us. We bring together all of our individual stories as we continue to write the next chapter of our collective story as Second Congregational / First Presbyterian Church. We would love for you to join your story of faith and life with ours. I look forward to meeting you.
Peace to you,
Rebecca
Rev. Rebecca White Newgren, Senior Pastor