All are welcome at First Church Boulder!
Since 1997, we’ve been a member church of the Reconciling Ministries Network, fully welcoming of LGBTQIA+ people and their loved ones.
We’re celebrating the 26th anniversary of becoming a Reconciling Congregation on Sunday, March 26th, 2023!
Join us for this special event during the 10:30 am worship service. ALL are welcome!
We celebrated 25 YEARS as a Reconciling Congregation on March 26-27, 2022, with Special Guest J.J. Warren (pictured right).
CLICK HERE to learn more about J.J. and this (past) event.
We were delighted to participate in the Boulder County Pride Motorcade on Sunday, June 13, 2021!
Thanks to Reconciling Ministries Co-Chairs Di and Katie for decorating First Church’s Pride Truck, and driving it in the motorcade. It was a great day! And thanks to our friends and neighbors at Out Boulder County for organizing a fantastic Boulder County Pride Week!
CLICK HERE to see some pictures from Boulder Pridefest 2020, and to watch a short video reflection from Rev. Mike Mather about Pridefest.
CLICK HERE to read First United Methodist Church of Boulder’s response to the February 26, 2019, vote by the General Conference of the United Methodist Church.
Our congregation’s journey to join together in a commitment to support the integration of healthy, loving expressions of sexuality for everyone had an uneasy beginning.
Over the past twenty-some years, we have worked as individuals and as a church body to overcome traditional homophobic prejudices that are expressed in United Methodist church policy. Our personal and congregational struggle to take the Christian principle of unconditional love seriously has led us to profound spiritual growth as we’ve opened our hearts and minds to accept all persons as worthy children of God.
Our congregational history included blatant homophobia in l982, when our youth minister, the Rev. Julian Rush, came out as a gay man and was abruptly dismissed from the FUMC staff amid much controversy. Fear of repeated congregational division was evoked when the question of sexuality arose again a decade later. First United Methodist Church of Boulder finally voted to become a Reconciling Congregation in March 1997 after some four years of discussion, discernment, and an arduous decision-making process.
Today, as a member church of the Reconciling Ministries Network (RMN) along with some 700 United Methodist congregations across the country, we proudly celebrate the sexuality and spirituality of both same and opposite gender loving persons, and act in hospitality across theological divides. We are committed to the creation of community, interconnectedness, and deep relationships. We are also in solidarity with the RMN in commitment to policy change and the creation of long-term solutions and practices that create full inclusion for LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and questioning) people in the United Methodist Church and our broader society. RMN works for full equality in membership, ordination, and marriage for all of God’s children.