Black Rock Congregational Church

Black Rock Congregational Church is a non-denominational evangelical church located in Fairfield, Connecticut. The church was established in 1849 in the Black Rock section of Bridgeport, Connecticut, and moved to its current site in 1968. Approximately 2000 adults and children attend the church's five weekend services. In 2007, a satellite campus in Stamford, Connecticut was established at the site of the former Long Ridge Congregational Church. The church is made up of ministry departments, and among them, several programs of teaching, outreach, service and worship. The church's ministries include Children's Ministries, Student Ministries, Adult Ministries, Outreach, Worship, Missions, Congregational Care and Spiritual Development.HistoryIn the late 1840s, a group of villagers of the Black Rock section of Fairfield, Connecticut, (later to become a part of the city of Bridgeport) parishioners of the First Church of Christ in Fairfield, Connecticut, decided that they would build a new meeting house in Black Rock, rather than continue the challenging three-mile weekly trip across the creek and marshland that separated the two sections of the town. A new church was established, and its meeting house was dedicated in August 1849 at the corner of Ellsworth St. and Bartram Ave.William Jessup Jennings served as the church's first minister. The church grew modestly through the middle of 19th century under the leadership of ministers Rev. Marinus Willett, Abram D. Baldwin, Rev. Frederick W. Williams, and Rev. Howard W. Pope. In 1881, the Rev. Henry Collins Woodruff accepted the pastorate of the church and served for 41 years, until his death in 1922. During Woodruff's tenure, a chapel was built, and upon his death, a memorial hall named for him was donated by his wife, Mary Bartram Woodruff.