All 7 Uses of

congregation
in
In Cold Blood

Not that there's much to see-simply an aimless congregation of buildings divided in the center by the main-line tracks of the Santa Fe Rail-road, a haphazard hamlet bounded on the south by a brown stretch of the Arkansas (pronounced "Ar-kan-sas") River, on the north by a highway, Route 50, and on the east and west by prairie lands and wheat fields.†
Chpt 1

He did not smoke, and of course he did not drink; indeed, he had never tasted spirits, and was inclined to avoid people who had-a circumstance that did not shrink his social circle as much as might be supposed, for the center of that circle was supplied by the members of Garden City's First Methodist Church, a congregation totaling seventeen hundred, most of whom were as abstemious as Mr. Clutter could desire.†
Chpt 1

Another reason, the simplest, the ugliest, was that this hitherto peaceful congregation of neighbors and old friends had suddenly to endure the unique experience of distrusting each other; understandably, they believed that the murderer was among themselves, and, to the last man, endorsed an opinion advanced by Arthur Clutter, a brother of the deceased, who, while talking to journalists in the lobby of a Garden City hotel on November 17, had said, "When this is cleared up, I'll wager whoever did it was someone within ten miles of where we now stand.†
Chpt 2

But by and large the Hartman congregation continued to suspect that Mabel Helm knew a thing or two that she was holding back.†
Chpt 2

Feet first, they crashed through the Trail Room's plate-glass window, and with Duntz and Dewey leaping after them, sped along Main Street, past Palmer Jewelry, Norris Drugs, the Garden Cafe, then around the corner and down to the depot and in and out, hide-and-seek, among a congregation of white grain-storage towers.†
Chpt 3

Indeed, the congregation in the square might have been expecting a parade, or attending a political rally.†
Chpt 3 *

It was the first time the public had been permitted to visit the Clutter place since the discovery of the murders, a circumstance which explained the presence of perhaps a third of the immense congregation-those who had come out of curiosity.†
Chpt 4

Definitions:

(1) (congregation as in: the congregation voted)
people who worship together in the same building
(2) (meaning too rare to warrant focus)
meaning too rare to warrant focus:

Much more rarely, congregation can reference any group of people, animals, or things collected together.