SANGERVILLE – The Rev. Adam Tierney’s journey to the pulpit began on the road to politics. The new pastor at the Sangerville and Dexter Universalist churches was working on Jesse Jackson’s 1988 political campaign when he was pulled to the ministry.

That year, the then-18-year-old attended the Democratic Convention in Atlanta, where he met ministers who had spent their lives combining economics, politics and spirituality in a quest for social justice. While politics was a natural for him, spirituality was something new.

Tierney grew up in a family steeped in politics. His father was James Tierney, attorney general from 1980 to 1990, and the younger Tierney cut his political teeth on his father’s unsuccessful campaign for governor in 1986. But on Sunday, Tierney delivered his first official sermon as a full-time pastor.

“As time has gone on, that motivation [social justice] has been placed in perspective,” the 29-year-old pastor said. “Any church’s primary mission is a spiritual one. That’s really what sustains me – seeing that spiritual dimension at work in life and helping others with those issues, especially the big ones like living and dying and what happens in between. Getting in touch with the transcendent, that’s what excites me.”

Tierney said that his family was “nominally Catholic,” but as a child, he did not attend Mass regularly. While a student at Bates College in Lewiston, he explored a variety of churches and eventually joined the Unitarian Universalist Church in Auburn. He earned his undergraduate degree in philosophy from the University of Maine, then headed to Chicago in 1994, where he was the youngest student at Meadville/Lombard Theological School, a Unitarian Universalist seminary on the University of Chicago campus.

“After two years there, I found I needed to get out in the real world, get a job, explore other options,” Tierney said. “So, I took time off from the seminary, worked around Bangor at Phoenix Employment and Rehab Services while my wife, Allison, was in grad school at UMaine.”

Tierney moved to Franklin County, where he worked with the chronically underemployed, but took courses at Bangor Theological Seminary to finish his master of divinity degree. He completed his chaplaincy training at Central Maine Medical Center, then was a church intern in the Detroit suburb of Gross Pointe, Mich., for a year.

Tierney will be ordained by his congregation in May. In the UU tradition, ministerial candidates are reviewed by a committee of pastors and laymen. If approved, candidates are given fellowships. Tierney received his last fall.

Tierney likened the experience to taking oral examinations or passing the bar exam on the first try. At 29 he is he considered a very young pastor in the UU association, but that is one of the qualities congregants and the outgoing minister found appealing about him.

Stephen Jackson, president of the congregation, is a self-employed carpenter and a member of the congregation for 16 years. On Sunday, he sported a tiny lapel pin shaped like a hammer and another that looked like a walrus – a literary reference to Lewis Carroll’s poem “The Walrus and the Carpenter.”

“Adam has a wonderful sense of humor,” Jackson said of the new pastor. “He also seems to have a wisdom greater than his years. When we met with him, the boards of both churches were there and he was very good on hits. Like Nomar Garciaparra [shortstop for the Boston Red Sox], Adam can go left, then go right, dig it out of the hole, come out throwing it across his body and get ’em out at first.”

The Rev. Dr. Alexander L. Craig served the Sangerville church for 121/2 years and the Dexter church for more than 10 after a long career in special education. He will retire to St. Petersburg, Fla., where his wife works and lives. In his last report to the congregations, he wrote, “You will find someone to love and someone who will love you, and love is what you do best.”

Craig said that Tierney is a good match for the congregations because he grew up in Livermore Falls and “has a good handle on what it means to live in a rural community. He is very well-read with a sound theological base. His youth and enthusiasm are qualities all churches need these days. Both congregations are ripe for a younger person to grow with them.

“When I first found out he was a candidate, I was very, very pleased,” Craig continued. “His style is very affable, relaxed and open. I think he understands the word ‘catholic’ as in the broad-minded sense.”

Craig said that Tierney’s “youth is going be positive for the [Sangerville] congregation,” which has 54 members. “Knowing the flavor of this congregation, his high energy level and his ability to speak and preach are all pluses.”

Marion Race, 86, has attended the Sangerville church her entire life. She has seen ministers come and go, and experienced many changes in the church, from which she has learned that “you have to roll with the flow.” She predicted that Tierney “is going to do very, very good here.”

The Sangerville church dates to 1825 when people from Dover, Foxcroft and Sangerville formed a Universalist Society. The Sangerville church was built in 1898. Painted green and yellow on the outside, the morning light floods through its large stained-glass windows.

One of the building’s most unusual features is a two-paneled Mary and Martha window that faces north and shows the two women attending to Jesus. Larry Lamont of Milo, who works at Bangor Theological Seminary, said it may be the only such window in the state and is probably one of the largest in the country.

In 1980, the Universalist Association joined the Unitarians in fellowship, and 14 years later, the Dover-Foxcroft church consolidated with the Sangerville church and closed its doors. Tierney divide his time between there and the Dexter church. He and Allison live in Harmony with their two-year-old son, Conor, and expect their second child in April.

“What I find most rewarding about pastoral work is just talking to people,” Tierney said. “You don’t go into the ministry if you don’t like people. The most challenging aspect of that is getting in touch with people and finding ways to minister to them.”

“Coming from a political family, I find that spending time in people’s homes and talking to them is part of politics, just as it is part of the ministry. As time went on, I saw the way politics addressed issues and I saw things that could be solved through the political system and things that could not be. Things that could not be interested me more.”