I wrote this book out of necessity. As Director of the Lay Ministry Program of the New York Conference UCC, I frequently taught a course on United Church of Christ History and Polity to lay ministers and to ministers of other denominations interested in the UCC. What could I use for a textbook? To get a complete view of the history of the UCC and its antecedents, one needed to read five books: Louis H. Gunnemann's The Shaping of the United Church of Christ; John Von Rohr's The Shaping of American Congregationalism, 1620-1957; David Dunn's A History of the Evangelical and Reformed Church; and Barbara Brown Zikmund's two volumes of Hidden Histories of the United Church of Christ. It would be unreasonable for me to require students to buy five books for the first half of a 20-hour course. I needed to bring together the history of the United Church of Christ into one volume.

My approach to UCC history is unusual. Instead of telling the four stories of the predecessor denominations separately, I have told one story. I have also included many stories that are usually omitted from our history, such as the Peace Movement, Thomas Gallaudet, and the Evangelical Synod experience in World War I. I have also chronicled my denomination's failures and our accomplishments. I see history through the eyes of one who has been a local church pastor for most of my fifty-five years in ministry, and whose graduate work focused on mission history. Parish life and missions loom large in this telling of the story.