St. Martin’s an ‘Excellent’ Church ‘Guide to Best Places and Practices’ puts Maine churches near top

PALMYRA – The congregation at St. Martin’s Episcopal Church is not sure how the church got listed in the book, “Excellent Protestant Congregations: The Guide to the Best Places and Practices,” but there it is.

The Rev. Janet E. McAuley, 75, vicar of the church in the former town meetinghouse on Route 2, fills out four or five surveys a year and doesn’t remember a questionnaire from the book’s author, Paul Wilkes, at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington.

With a grant from Lilly Endowment Inc., Wilkes created a kind of “Michelin Guide” to great churches. The team also published, “Excellent Catholic Parishes: The Guide to Best Places and Practices.” Each book profiles in depth about a dozen congregations, then lists nearly 300 additional churches.

Three Maine congregations, two Protestant, one Roman Catholic, are included in the volumes, including St. Martin’s, Williston-West Congregational Church in Portland and St. Charles Borremeo Catholic Church in Brunswick.

Wilkes, 62, author on American religions, teaches writing at UNCW and is a Catholic layman who for a decade was a Methodist.

His church hunt originated four years ago at a weekend speaking engagement at the Church of the Presentation in Upper Saddle River, N.J.

“I just saw a parish at work, being happy about what they did,” Wilkes said in an interview last month. “It didn’t seem to be heavy lifting, just an authentic, joyful spirit, not the pasty-faced, have-a-nice-day Christianity. Parishioners were living the Gospel, not mouthing it.”

Faith in God, faith in each other and imagination are listed among traits that include innovative worship, tradition, flexibility, self-scrutiny, a forgiving atmosphere and openness to community needs.

“To have them notice a small church was, we thought, pretty nice,” McAuley says. “One of the things that’s special about this church community is everybody does something. It’s not always visible.”

It is St. Martin’s many years of being visible in the community that parishioners say put the church on the list. Over the years, it has housed a Head Start program, a food and clothing bank as well as other community programs.

Since 1988, the church has run a literacy program in the parish hall, formerly the Grange Hall. It also houses the town library on the second floor. St. Martin’s also is well-known for its turkey dinners and bean-hole bean suppers that raise funds for its outreach efforts.

“Everybody here does something and that’s helpful,” McAuley says. “With dwindling resources and a shortage of clergy, we need to go back to basics and get people aware of their own ministries, then we need to do them.”

Discovering what one’s ministry is might take awhile, McAuley knows. She taught anatomy, physiology and kinesiology for 30 years at Indiana University.

In 1978, she started on the road leading to her ordination in 1983. St. Martin’s is the only parish she’s ever led, and while she works full time, the small church can support only a half-time minister.

“I began looking at New England because I suffer from severe allergies and my doctor suggested they’d lessen here,” she said. “This is the first parish I put my paperwork in for, but I knew this is the place I really wanted to be.”

In 1991, Maine Public Broadcasting produced a documentary about St. Martin’s impact on the community. The video captured the attention of Thomas Duplessie, a Hartland resident who started attending church shortly after it aired.

He will graduate from Bangor Theological Seminary’s Small Church Leadership Program today in Portland and intends to begin studies for the ministry.

Kimberly Russell of Pittsfield has been attending the church for almost a decade. She was raised a Catholic and her husband was a Methodist. Russell says that the Episcopal Church is a good compromise for their family. Yet, it was through St. Martin’s outreach program that the family first encountered the church.

“I had a child in the Head Start program here,” says Russell. “We hadn’t been members very long, when I got fired for taking maternity leave and my husband was not working due to a shoulder injury.

“Janet brought us all the things we couldn’t buy with food stamps – diapers, toilet paper, Kleenex, dish soap, laundry detergent. I’d never seen a pastor do anything that practical before. It really impressed me and is an example of how loving and caring this community is.”

St. Martin’s Episcopal Church will hold a bean-hole bean supper at 6 p.m. Saturday, May 26, and an open house at the library from 2 to 4 p.m. Sunday, May 20.