First Congregational Church of Cheshire

The Rev. Jeffrey D. Braun is the Senior Minister of First Congregational Church.

From September 2004 to early 2009, Jeff served in Redding, Conn. as associate minister at The First Church of Christ, Congregational. Before his tenure in Redding, Jeff interned at First Church Congregational in Fairfield. His pastoral training includes a 2002 chaplaincy/clinical pastoral care program at Norwalk Hospital.

Jeff was born in Bronxville, N. Y. In 1986, he graduated from Staples High School in Westport, the town in which he grew up and in which his family and he attended the Greens Farms Congregational Church. He earned his undergraduate degree with honors in Rhetoric from Bates College in 1990.

From 1991 through 2001, Jeff worked in corporate advertising and marketing, serving such clients as Procter & Gamble, AT&T, and Johnson & Johnson. He is a 2004 graduate of Yale Divinity School, where he received the prestigious Henry Hallam Tweedy Prize (a distinction awarded to the graduating student who displays exceptional promise for pastoral leadership). Since graduating, Jeff has served on the Yale Divinity School Board of Advisors, and has helped teach the “Introduction to Pastoral Care” course as an adjunct member of the Divinity faculty.

He and his wife, Lori Braun (who also graduated from Staples High School in 1986), met in 1990 and married in 1997. They live in Cheshire with their three daughters: Serena, age 8; Anike (pronounced: ah-NEE-kay), age 6; and Olivia, age 3.