Our Minister of Music is Edwin I. Lawrence, B.Mus.
Ed is Adjunct Teacher of Piano, Organ and Harpsichord, and Teaching Assistant in Theory and Eartraining in the Williams College Music Department.
Ed holds the B. Mus. degree (magna cum laude) from SUNY Fredonia, 1969.
His teachers include Gabriel Chodos for piano and Preethi de Silva for harpsichord. He is Music Director of the Bennington County Choral Society. Ed is a founding member of the Consortium of Vermont Composers. He has guest conducted the Vermont Symphony. In 1990 he received the Citation of Merit from the Vermont Council on the Arts.

Welcome to our website!

We hope those of you who are surfing through our pages might venture out to meet us some time at our 10:30 a.m. Sunday worship service, or at one of our many other events open to the public. Although we sit right in the middle of a busy college campus, too many people are unaware of all the activity going in and out of our doors! Once a month there are weekend meals prepared and delivered to seniors in the community through the hands of our volunteer families. Once a year our high school youth take a mission trip to help Habitat with Humanity after having spent previous months doing service projects in our local community. Once a year there is a beautiful candlelight worship service on Christmas Eve crowded with returning family and friends and visitors. There are classes and choirs for both adults and children; and lots of good causes which welcome your creative energy. And every Sunday morning we join in worship.

We care about our church family and friends. And we care about you, our potential visitors! We care about our environment and global warming and have been active with other local organizations taking action. We care about peace and have lifted our voices to say so. We care about justice, and work toward alleviating injustice in many different ways. We care about ensuring that everyone receives an equal welcome, no matter what their race, class, or gender identity. No matter who you are or where you are on life’s journey, you’re welcome here.

Carrie Bail, Pastor

The Rev. Carrie Bail is pastor of the First Congregational Church of Williamstown United Church of Christ where she has served since the summer of 2000. Born, raised, and educated in New England, after a B.A. degree in anthropology from Yale, she spent some years migrating south and west, living first in Mexico and then Hawaii. In Honolulu, singing in choir of the Lutheran Church, she met her husband, Darius Jonathan, a graduate student at the University of Hawaii from southern Sudan. After attending seminary at Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley, CA. she was ordained and served her first church, Ka Hana O Ke Akua United Church of Christ in Wai’anae, Hawaii beginning in 1987. All three of the Jonathan children were born into the loving “ohana” (family) of that congregation.

In the mid-nineties, economics and elderly parents prompted the family’s return to New England where Carrie served Canaan Congregational Church (UCC) in the New York Berkshires until 2000. Since settling within yards of the Haystack Monument in Williamstown, her life-long fascination with multiculturalism has been reignited by the story of how the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions was born here. (In 2006 First Church hosted the Haystack Bicentennial Celebration.) She is challenged by imagining what form global ministry might take in the present, especially living right in the middle of a college campus. A visit from her mother-in-law, Raile Daffala, deaconess and Church Mother in Khartoum in the Anglican Church, inspired her commitment to mission anew.

Carrie loves music of all kinds, especially singing sacred choral music and listening to jazz as performed by her son. She enjoys children’s literature, writing, swimming (especially in the Pacific ocean), and being a soccer mom. She is a committed activist for peace and justice, most particularly around issues of mental health, climate change, and education in and about the Sudan.

The Rev. Carrie Bail
Pastor
413-458-4273, ext. 103
E-mail

Gail M. Burns
Office Administrator and Assistant to the Pastor
413-458-4273
E-mail

Harry LaGess
Sexton
413-458-4273, ext. 104
E-mail

Edwin I. Lawrence
Minister of Music
413-458-4273, ext. 106
E-mail

Kathy Noble
Director of Christian Education
413-458-4273, ext. 105
E-mail

Christine Noble Drosehn
Youth Leader
413-458-4273, ext. 105
E-mail

Annie Parkman
Financial Secretary
413-458-4273, ext. 107
E-mail

Kay Sherman
Assistant Treasurer
413-458-4273, ext. 107
E-mail