It’s a summer Sunday morning in Boothbay Harbor, Maine, a small fishing community far along a peninsula that extends 10 miles into the Atlantic Ocean. Each year, thousands of visitors and summer residents stay at hotels, bed and breakfasts, or rental houses. Just as many settle into the grand homes that dot the shore where successive generations of families have enjoyed the glorious summer weather for which the Maine coast is known.
Except today it is raining. For the visitor to the new home of St. Columba’s Episcopal Church, the rain doesn’t seem to matter. At the front door, a church member holding a big, colorful umbrella walks out to the newcomer’s car and accompanies the visitor from the packed parking lot to the entrance. Inside, another greeter invites the newcomer to sign the guest book and make a nametag. Members along the row of chairs that serve as seating in the nave offer a wave and a smiling hello.
Wait a minute. Is this an Episcopal Church? “That’s how we welcome people here,” the Rev. Margaret “Greta” Russell explained after the service. Russell, who has served the congregation since 1998, was at the helm when the people of St. Columba’s decided that after 30 years as a building-less mission it was time to build a church. Most recently, members worshipped each Sunday in a former United Methodist chapel located at the Boothbay Railway Village and Museum a few miles from the center of Boothbay Harbor.
“For a small congregation with 60 people at a Sunday service, it was a huge leap of faith,” Russell said. “One member donated all the cedar shingles. There was a stone-soup element to the building of this church.”
In a natural, tree-filled setting close to the village center, next to the high school and on the same road as a retirement community, the new St. Columba’s seemed poised to welcome the community. The light-filled, pew-free worship space seems to invite the beauty of coastal Maine into the building in a way that the church’s namesake, the Celtic missionary St. Columba, might appreciate.
Sharing holy space and vitality
Shortly after moving into their beautiful new building in February, members of St. Columba’s started to realize that something was happening they had not expected. Groups such as Alcoholics Anonymous and an ecumenical group of people interested in Taize worship knocked on the door wondering if they might share space. Recently, the local elementary school held a concert and a supper at St. Columba’s.
“The AA group started with three or four people and has grown in just a few months to more than 30,” said Co-warden Tandy Mitchell. “People love the warmth and welcome of our church.” Besides regular evening Taize services, a Saturday morning meditation group and healing services are taking root as regular events.
Larry Reynolds, a member who works with the youth and healing ministries at St. Columba’s, described how people in the greater Boothbay community have responded to the church, the first built on the peninsula in more than 50 years. “Everyone wants to be here,” he said. “At the supermarket and the video store, I hear people I don’t necessarily know say to one another, ‘Oh, you should go there!’
“The Holy Spirit is here and drawing people through our doors.” But the influx of people on Sunday mornings and the first-time responsibility of caring for a church building necessitated some adjustments in how things had always been done. Because St. Columba’s has never owned a building and never needed a sexton, members of the congregation agreed to “adopt-a-room” to clean each week. Though new pledges have been made and giving is up, the people of St. Columba’s recognize they are in a time of transition and need more support in education and administration.
“With this growth, we need to free Greta up to provide more pastoral care and less administration,” said Mitchell told members at a recent after-church meeting. “Caring for the pastoral needs of the congregation and the community is her calling, and we need to share the other responsibilities.”
The Rev. Carl Russell, a retired priest who is married to the vicar, used native imagery to describe St. Columba’s move from a family-sized to a pastoral-sized church. “When the lobster grows bigger and needs to shed its shell, it’s tiny inside until it grows to fill it out. That’s where we are, and this interim place is an exciting place to be.”
Helped by a diocesan grant to support congregations in transition and by Russell slightly reducing her time this year, the people of St. Columba’s are busy planning to welcome new members and share their holy space and vitality with the wider Boothbay community. Whether providing hospitality to a newly arrived family from Louisiana or prayerfully knitting shawls for those in need, this small church is busy growing into its new building and their life together.
