Storrs Congregational Church UCC

Matthew Emery
Senior Minister

“Pastor Matt” began serving Storrs Congregational Church, United Church of Christ, as our senior minister at the beginning of 2011. He came to us after nearly four-and-a-half years as the associate pastor of a United Church of Christ congregation in Rockford, Illinois, and has also served on the staff of a UCC congregation in the metro-Washington-DC area (Arlington, VA). As senior minister, Pastor Matt’s day-to-day work focuses on the wide range of our congregation’s life together. He has significant responsibility for preaching and worship leadership, for pastoral care and visitation, and for congregational leadership, staff supervision, and administration. He also is the primary pastoral liaison to our student group, UCC UConn, and for other things having to do with UConn students and the wider university community. Pastor Matt has been very active in wider settings of the United Church of Christ. Having previously served on the committee on ministry and a conference minister search committee when he was in Illinois, he currently chairs the Nominating Committee for the Connecticut Conference of the United Church of Christ. He has previously been active with the UCC Coalition for LGBT Concerns, including as lead worship planner and coordinator for their 2007 National Gathering, and is now a member of the inaugural class of the Next Generation Leadership Initiative: Target 2030, an initiative coordinated through the United Church Board for Ministerial Assistance (a subsidiary of our Pension Boards), that seeks out our denomination’s most-promising younger clergy for a multi-year intensive program of leadership development and education as an investment in the long-term health and vitality of the local congregations of the United Church of Christ. A native of central lower Michigan, Matt is a graduate of the Chicago Theological Seminary (M.Div., 2006) and of Michigan State University (B.S., Computer Science, 2002). He has also completed continuing education at Princeton Theological Seminary (fellow of the Engle Institute of Preaching, 2013 & 2014; Certificate in Youth and Theology, 2009; Forums on Youth Ministry, 2007-9) among other places. Matt and his partner Adam Yates, an Episcopal priest serving in East Haddam, recently took up residence in a 300-year-old house in Andover where they live with Demon, their cat, and Daniel, their beagle puppy.