Bishop Thomas J. Bickerton has placed every local church in the New England Annual Conference into a cooperative parish. “Cooperative parishes create a larger and deeper pool of gifts and resources as well as provide more opportunities for spiritual, communal and mission growth and vitality to all of the church and their members.”
The Franklin UMC has been placed in the “South-West Cooperative Parish” with Centenary UMC (Attleboro, MA), Chartley UMC (Norton, MA), Plainville UMC (Plainville, MA), and South Walpole UMC (South Walpole, MA). Rev. Dr. Jacob Juncker, pastor of the Franklin UMC, has been named the Parish Coordinator.
Cooperative parishes can take many forms—ranging from simple relationship‑building clusters to more structured shared‑ministry models. Each parish discerns its own shape over time. The New England Conference emphasizes that cooperative parishes are not mergers; they are partnerships designed to help congregations deepen discipleship, strengthen mission, and respond more effectively to the needs of their wider region. The South-West Cooperative Parish covers 24 towns and more than half a million people, offering a tremendous opportunity to imagine ministry beyond what any one church could do alone. To learn more about cooperative parishes, go to https://www.neumc.org/parishes.
Below is a map of the Massachusetts towns in our region. Towns colored green note the communities in which our parish churches are located. Orange towns are adjacent communities that do not have any United Methodist (UM) churches. And, in the list of towns, the ones colored red (Cumberland, RI, and Pawtucket, RI) are adjacent communities with UM churches.
Over the next several months, each congregation in our parish will have opportunities to learn about cooperative ministry, meet one another, and begin discerning what our shared mission might look like. This may include joint worship, shared studies, collaborative outreach, or exploring new ministries that become possible when our gifts are combined.
If you would like to be part of the conversation and/or serve as a liaison with other churches in our parish, please contact Pastor Jacob. And as always, if you have any questions about what this means, especially for the Franklin UMC, don’t hesitate to schedule a phone call, office appointment, coffee or lunch visit with Pastor Jacob.