First Parish, Brewster, MA

Current size - 700 members, 171 children and youth; Five years ago - 573 members, 200 children and youth.

Staff: The Rev. James Robinson, senior minister (20 yrs.); the Rev. Mykel Johnson, assistant minister (4); the Rev. Panchetta Peterson, community minister (4); Denis Meacham, ministerial intern (2); Catherine Cullen, ministerial intern (2); Kathy Cronin, Children and Youth Ministries director (7); Jerry Morley, music director (10). Other staff include a church administrator and financial administrator, sexton, membership/volunteer coordinator, Children and Youth Ministries assistant, organist.

Communications: Monthly newsletter, The Angle. Web site: www.fpbuu.org. E-mail: Used primarily by children and youth ministries.

Sunday service attendance: 300 adults, children, and youth.

Financial: Median pledge: $750 per pledging unit. Pledging units: 385. Budget: $450,000, of which $341,000 is raised in the annual canvass. Annual Program Fund Fair Share congregation: Yes.

Facilities: Church founded in 1700. Current building (1834): a traditional New England meeting house with steeple. A two-story social hall and religious education addition was added in 1983. A third building, Dawes Hall (1909), is used for small group meetings. A nearby barn was recently converted for Children and Youth Ministry classes and an adjacent house was remodeled for administrative offices.

Notable achievements: First Welcoming Congregation, 1990. Helped another UU congregation on Cape Cod, at Chatham, buy its first building, 1995. One of the first UU "sanctuary churches" in the 1980s, sheltering and resettling 19 Salvadorans.

Reasons for growth: Dynamic team of ordained and lay ministers and staff; innovative children and youth ministries program; housing boom, strong sense of commnity, and well known social justice work.