First Congregational Church of Peru

“Welcome to First Congregational Church of Peru.”

Sunday School classes start at 9:00 and our Worship service begins at 10:30

This is how we start our Sunday morning.

Our Worship Service  is at 10:30 am every Sunday, and ALL are welcome!  Our day of gathering actually starts at 9 am, currently with three opportunities for growing in our faith.  A class for 6-10 years olds is taught by Ellen Marincic. Our Junior/Senior High Sunday School class is taught by Dean and Dawn Tieman for our students in 6th-12th grades.  At the same time, our Adult Sunday School class, led by our Pastor delves into God’s Word.

At 10:30 am, our worship service begins with a processional hymn led by our choir as they enter the sanctuary, with the whole congregation joining in.  We continue with brief announcements, along with sharing praises and prayer requests.

Our service resumes as we highlight a verse from God’s Word that we can reflect on, while we also get to enjoy music from our talented organist, Lois Croasdale.  Following this, we call each other to worship with a responsive reading and then sing the first of three traditional hymns from our hymnbook.  Thankfully (for me), when it comes to the singing, there are no judges or auditions, just a love for praising our God in song.

Led by director Ellen Marincic, the choir then sings a wonderful musical arrangement.  This is followed by a Children’s Message given to our young and young at heart.  The children ages 4-5 then are invited to Children’s Church for the rest of the worship time.  (A nursery (with audio capability to hear the service) is also available for our youngest parishioners for the whole service.)

We then worship our Lord with our tithes and offerings, after which Pastor leads our time of prayer.  This begins with our silent individual prayer and is followed by his pastoral prayer, and we finish this prayer time by sharing the Lord’s Prayer together.

Now comes our second hymn, again with our wonderful organist at the keys.  We follow that with a reading of a passage from God’s Word and then Pastor offers a sermon based on it.

On the first Sunday of every month at this time in the service, we observe our Lord’s call to “do this in remembrance of me” and share Holy Communion.  We observe it openly, where all believers are welcome to share in the bread and wine (grape juice) in thanksgiving of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and in remembrance of His death for our sins.

We close the service with our third and final hymn and the Benediction.

After worship every Sunday, we have fellowship and refreshments in Morgan Hall, hosted by one of our boards, where all are welcome to stay and enjoy some time together.

Hopefully, this gives you a brief glimpse into our time of worshipping our God.  I can tell you the real thing is significantly better than anything that I could write and would welcome you to come join us and see for yourself what we are so excited about!