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Reverend Susan Nye Thornton is a graduate of Northeastern University, earning a Bachelor of Science Degree in Finance with highest honor, and Andover Newton Theological School’s Master of Divinity Degree with high honor. She served Pilgrim Congregational Church in Taunton, Massachusetts as Associate Pastor, First Congregational Church of Marshfield, Massachusetts as Senior Pastor, and as a Hospice Chaplain in southeastern Massachusetts. Pastor Susan has completed specialized training in Intentional Interim Ministry with The Interim Ministry Network, Andover Newton, and the American Baptist Churches of Massachusetts, along with grief and bereavement pastoral training.
Pastor Susan makes her home in Hanson with her husband of over forty years, Wayne, and their daughter, Susannah, who is an opera singer with a graduate degree in Vocal Performance from The Longy School of Music of Bard College.
Pastor Susan’s congregational roots go back to the foundation of Congregationalism in England: her paternal uncle, eleven generations removed, was Philip Nye, one of the Five Dissenting Brethren of the Westminister Confession of 1647 (the precursor of The Cambridge Platform), and an influential writer, preacher and leader of congregational reform in England. Her ancestor, Benjamin Nye, settled in Sandwich, Massachusetts in 1637, and married the daughter of the first minister of the Congregational church in Sandwich, his name appearing on a subscription list for building a Meetinghouse in 1655.
Pastor Susan is a past convener of the Mayflower Ministers Association and has been a member of The Building and Loan Committee of the National Association of Congregational Christian Churches for more than a decade. She is honored and humbled to serve our Lord as Senior Minister of Chiltonville Congregational Church and with all church members who minister for Christ on their frontlines every day.