UCC at The Villages started in 2007 — a handful of people who believed something was missing and decided to do something about it. We moved into our home on County Road 101 in August of 2010, and we've been growing, questioning, laughing, grieving, and finding our way together ever since.
We are part of a tradition rooted in the Protestant Reformation, shaped by the Pilgrims who crossed the Atlantic looking for the freedom to practice their faith without coercion, and marked by the first organized Christian anti-slavery movement in American history. We carry that legacy. And we're still adding to it. ______________________________________________
We Believe God Is Still Speaking
Not was speaking — in burning bushes and ancient texts. Still speaking. In this world. In this room. In you. That conviction shapes everything about us. We hold the Bible seriously — and we believe it has always been pointing us somewhere. Toward dignity. Toward justice. Toward the ones the powerful would rather ignore. When you follow that arc across the whole of Scripture, when you pay attention to the way Jesus lived and who he welcomed and what he said about the reign of God — it leads somewhere. It leads toward inclusion. It leads toward the radical, disruptive, inconvenient love that doesn't sort people before it embraces them. That's not a political position. That's just where the story goes. _______________________________________________
We Are an Inclusive Church— and Here's Why
We are a fully Open and Affirming congregation. LGBTQ+ people are not just tolerated here — they are fully welcomed, fully affirmed, and fully included in every aspect of our life together. No asterisks. No conditions. No fine print.
We didn't arrive here because it seemed like the culturally progressive thing to do. We arrived here because we kept reading Scripture. Because we kept following Jesus. Because the same love that crossed every boundary in the Gospels — that touched the untouchable, welcomed the outcast, and sat down at the wrong tables — that love kept leading us here.
We believe the church gets it wrong when it uses the Bible as a fence. Jesus used his life as a door. The table is open. It has always been open. And everyone is welcome at it. ___________________________________________________
Who You'll Find Here
Many of us came from Catholic or evangelical or mainline Protestant backgrounds. Some of us left those traditions hurt. Some left bored. Some couldn't reconcile what we were told to believe with what we actually experienced in the world. And somehow, we found our way here. You'll find people who take questions seriously — because we have a lot of them ourselves. You'll find worship with real energy, honest preaching, and a community that would rather sit with complexity than rush past it. You'll find science and faith treated as partners, not opponents. You'll find your head and your heart both welcome.
What you won't find is a checklist of beliefs you have to sign before you belong.
Come as You Are
Wherever you are on this road — curious, skeptical, wounded, searching, or somewhere you can't quite name — there is a place for you here.
No matter who you are or where you are on life's journey, you are welcome here. We mean that.
