You could have decided to do many things with your Sunday morning, but you choose to be here. Your presence is appreciated, not just by me and Reverend Danielle, but by our Founders who are no doubt dancing with us in the molecules of the universe. If this is your first or your 71st Founders Day Service, you are where you’re supposed to be this morning.

Close your eyes for a moment and call to mind our Founders. No doubt they are nodding their approval for our willingness to come together on this first weekend in August. It was our Founders who established this tradition. It is written in the text of the Records Book of the First Church in Salem in 1629.

Welcome to the Founders Day Service for 2026.

Do not worry. I will not keep you long. It’s hot, we’re busy, and we’ve done this all before and we’ll do it again. So, when I delve back to the time of the King and our Puritan ancestors, do not panic. I’ll keep the journey short.

But before we travel back, it’s important to root ourselves in the moment. Remember the Sankofa (san-koh-fah) bird, a symbol from African culture that reminds us of the need to reflect on the past if we want to build a successful future.

Let’s pause to recognize the dedicated and sincere people we call our congregation. Everyone here and those who couldn’t make it, are all important and worthy of our appreciation every day but how can we not speak today of Billy, Catherine, Jim, and Jerry, Alicia and Penny, John and Eric, Jamie and Lynn. Think of our annual Christmas Pageant, the love, attention, and knowledge imparted to the children of this community week after week. our lovely garden and the choir voices that lift our spirits. Think about the time and energy so many invest in the church tours as they invest in our future. Enough. I promised to keep it short. Let’s do it this way. All of us, as the moment moves us, will remember to say to each other and say it often, thanks for being here, thanks for being you.

And now to the king; Charles 1st of England, Scotland, and Ireland. He ruled on both sides of the Atlantic from 1625 until his execution in 1649. Yes, beheaded. Politicians had their troubles back then as ours do now.

But as far as we are concerned, looking back to those days, King Charles made some good choices. It was he who decided to bestow on the colonists of Naumkeag land grants and people that would take his colonies further than his best laid plans could have envisioned. He was the one who decided Naumkeag needed a Church. Up until 1629 too many promising colonies failed to thrive in the way the king needed them to do. He knew as we know that much more can be accomplished together than by loosely gathered individuals on their own.

Reverend Samuel Skelton and Reverend Francis Higginson were ministers of the Church of England. They were known to be nonconformists which probably played a large part in how things unfolded here. They took their charge from the King seriously and began by making central our covenant, the one we still hold so dear.

But the ministers knew they couldn’t and wouldn’t be able to achieve much alone. And so we remember that there were many more players. For example, John Endicott’s ship was delayed but he too arrived and was part of those early days of this church.

We will hear Roger Conant’s name many times this morning. In his time the indigenous people called this area Naumkeag. Conant was living, working as a salter, and governing on these new England shores five years before the Bonaventure, Talbot and Abigail ships arrived.

The phrase, “the peaceful transfer of power” is often in the news these days. I mention it here because it’s where and how Salem got its name. John Endicott also sent by King Charles 1 was to take up his place as Governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony which included Naumkeag.

So how was this to work? Choices needed to be made.

Roger Conant had attended to the local governing for years when the King’s appointed governor arrived. Roger Conant was a man of good character ready to cooperate and made his choices accordingly.

And it was our own Reverend Francis Higginson, Teacher of the First Church who proposed that as the transfer of power happened the place should be named Salem, a Hellenized version of the Hebrew word shalom or peace, in honor of the peaceful agreement between John Endicott and Roger Conant.

For so many, back then and for us today it comes down to the choices we make. How much will we give? What can we do? Who will we let into our hearts?

Here we celebrate choice. The First Church in Salem then and now demonstrates that independent thinking and making our own choices are the very thing that keeps us moving forward and life worth living. Thinking for ourselves, making our choices keeps us on our toes, reminding us that it is within our power each-and-every day to make the most of the time we are given.

And so, each Sunday morning, we wake up and chose to come together under the name of the First Church in Salem, to join together in worship and good works. Sometimes the most important of these works is to put an arm over the shoulder of a troubled member of our congregation, to share a kind word across a cup of tea during fellowship or to raise a voice in song to project a rousing tune alongside others willing to do the same to make beautiful music together.

Call it spiritual, call it magic, whatever it is it happens week after week in the light from our stained-glass windows, in the pews of this beautiful granite edifice that is our sacred place together. We thank you, our Founders thank you for being here today. The First Church in Salem continues to move forward thanks to the choices we make for ourselves and together with each other.