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Location: Cambridge, Mass.
Presbytery: Atlantic
Organization: July 1895
Membership: 45 communicant; 23 baptized
Elders: Tom Fisher, Tim Montgomery, Daniel Howe (interim moderator)
Website: www.reformedprescambridge.com
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There has been a Reformed Presbyterian church on Antrim Street in Cambridge for more than 120 years. Antrim Street is a residential street, tree-lined and filled with multi-family wooden homes painted in many beautiful colors. Nestled among these homes is our church building, complete with stained glass windows and a steeple, but no parking lot! This fact highlights the urban setting of our church—some of us arrive by subway or on foot, and those who drive find parking on Antrim Street or nearby. Our current parsonage on Antrim Street was purchased in 1959.
The church building was originally built simply, with little more than an auditorium. A couple of rooms were soon added to provide space for fellowship and classes. In more recent years, we have waterproofed the church basement and added classrooms, a nursery, and bathrooms. With many hours of able help from Arianna Montgomery, our deacon Kyle Finley has led us in making numerous repairs all over both of our buildings. They are now more weatherproof, appealing, and useful for ministry.
Cambridge is across the Charles River from Boston, and is thus part of the greater Boston area—a desirable place to live, work, and play. Housing prices are high, forcing some of us to look for housing at a distance from the church.
With Harvard, MIT, Northeastern, Boston University, and many other colleges and universities nearby, we have the opportunity to worship with visitors and students from all over the U.S. and many foreign countries.
We don’t have a pastor at this time, but we are ably shepherded by our two ruling elders, Tom Fisher and Tim Montgomery, and our interim moderator of session, Daniel Howe. They pour themselves out in service to the congregation. Our pastoral search committee is leading us in seeking the man God has prepared to be our next pastor. We eagerly anticipate his coming, since we have been without a pastor for almost two-and-a-half years.
The highlight of our week is the Lord’s Day. Sabbath school classes for all ages meet first; then we come together to worship. Although our pulpit is “vacant,” we hear rich preaching from the Word of God supplied by various Reformed pastors living nearby, pastoral candidates, visiting RP pastors, and our elder emeritus, Chris Wright. Once a month we have lunch together following worship. Two area groups meet midweek and a group of women meet together once a month. We love to fellowship after church and continue to be “the church that won’t go home” (quoted from our 2006 Congregation of the Month article).
We were excited to be able to plant a daughter church in Providence, R.I., in 2006 (now Christ RPC), but we were disappointed when our Berkshire Mission in western Massachusetts was closed in 2015. And now we need to focus on building up our congregation here. Our heart’s desire is to see God’s kingdom advanced in Cambridge, the Boston area, and all of New England, through conversion of our relatives, friends, co-workers, and neighbors in Cambridge, and through our public proclamation of the truths of God’s Word.
In the summertime, our next-door neighbor on Antrim Street frequently supplies flowers from her garden to put in a vase on the table at the front of our auditorium. In the spring and fall, the stained glass windows along the sides of our auditorium are sometimes raised a few inches and our neighbors tell us they appreciate hearing us sing the Psalms. Each December, we go up and down Antrim Street to sing carols about the coming of Jesus; some of our neighbors stand in their doorways to listen, in spite of the cold. Please pray with us that some of these neighbors will come to know Jesus and join us in worship.
We look to the future with hope, feeling that we are poised to grow. We invite you to come and visit, or, even better, to come and join us in the work of God here.