the church

The life blood of the Union Church is its small, committed congregation led for more than 20 years by Pastor Janet McKinstry, a U.C.C. ordained minister.

Sunday after Sunday for the past 180 years this historic building has been a regular setting for Christian worship. Over the years Tyringham’s Methodists and Baptists merged under a Congregational minister to form a truly Union Church where members range in many devotional traditions, including Catholics and Quakers.

The Sunday worship service, held in the evening, is a contemplative end to the weekend. On Christmas Eve the church is illuminated with hand-held candles; at Easter it is filled with memorial flowers.

Beyond these regular services, some 22 weddings and 76 funerals have been held at the church in the past thirty years. For these important passages, the transcendent spaces of the Church draw many who do not regularly worship here - families currently living in Tyringham and those with past connections to the valley. It is truly a place of solace and celebration.

In a recent Berkshire Eagle* article congregation member Holly McLennan Ketron, whose roots in Tyringham go back to her childhood, said “This is a church which is cherished as a spiritual center of the valley.”

The congregation attends to heating and insuring, sweeping and scrubbing the church building - on a shoestring, with mostly volunteer help. Over her long tenure in Tyringham, the multi-talented Rev. McKinstry herself has made deep connections beyond the congregation to the community. She has held puppet shows with her handmade puppets and illustrated a children’s book set in Tyringham. In 2012 when the church needed a new sound system, she sewed a unique quilt for a raffle to boost the effort.

In a small community, the civic and spiritual realms are often intertwined. Every year the Church works with the Tyringham Veterans’ Officer in organizing the Town’s Memorial Day celebration in the cemetery. The New Year’s bonfire of 2023 honored retiring longtime policeman, Pat Holiahan.