St. Saviour’s Episcopal Church is nestled against the heart of Bar Harbor, a block off the village green. Its stonework and stained-glass windows beckon passers-by to rest, meditate and, perhaps, pray inside the historic structure. A few moments beneath the high arched ceilings, gazing at the colorful windows sparkling in the summer sun could cause even the most devoted doubter to reconsider.

The church also is a monument to the past. Built in 1878, the names of its founders and early members read like the New York Social Register. Its stained-glass windows are some of the finest in the nation. During the summer months, St. Saviour’s draws more than 100 vacationers a week and offers tours three afternoons a week. It is one of the few churches in the state whose doors are open 12 hours a day, seven days a week.

St. Saviour’s is the oldest, largest and tallest public building on Mount Desert Island and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Its 42 stained-glass windows are a tourist attraction in a community rife with tourist attractions. The church also has an aging congregation, an 18-room rectory and a parish house to maintain in addition to the church, and the congregation has been without a permanent rector for three years.

The church is in the process of examining itself and defining its place in the Bar Harbor community. When that process is complete, members will create a profile of what they need in a minister and begin the interview process, according to the Rev. Edwin Cox, interim rector. He predicted that it would be as least another year before the congregation calls a rector. According to church rules, Cox cannot be a candidate for the job.

“In my opinion, our charge is to be conservators of the past, not prisoners of the present,” said the Rev. Edwin A. Garrett III, a retired Episcopal priest who has written a 90-page history of St. Saviour’s. “We must use the richness of what we have received [from the past] and bring the values of our predecessors into the future, while welcoming new ideas.”

Garrett, who served churches in Pennsylvania before retiring to MDI 30 years ago, knows more about the history of the church than any other member. After Sunday services last weekend, he said that he decided to research the church history after rescuing important records and letters from the Dumpster behind the rectory. The volunteers who give tours of the church in July and August carry Garrett’s document and refer to it often.

The congregation was founded in 1870 by an early group of summer people. It was named St. Saviour’s for the French Jesuit Mission, St. Sauveur, established on the island in 1613. The words translate as holy savior or holy redeemer, which is the name of Bar Harbor’s Roman Catholic church located across the street and a block west of the Episcopal church.

The current church building was erected in three stages, according to Garrett, after the land was purchased in 1871. The first church was completed in 1878 and seated 325 people. The next year, the Rev. Christopher Starr Leffingwell left Christ Church in Gardiner to become rector at St. Saviour’s. He would serve the Bar Harbor church for two decades and oversee its rapid growth and expansion.

By 1885, summer worshippers often numbered 1,000 and construction of the current structure began and the original church became the transcept (the transverse part of a cruciform church). It included a 15-foot radius aspe and an Italian marble high altar. With its 90-foot bell tower, shingled wall and roof, it resembled Trinity Church in Boston’s Copley Square.

Mrs. William Vanderbilt had a church hall built for the Sunday school in 1888. At the turn of the century the chancel and sanctuary were added, given by the Charles Carroll Jackson family. The Chapel of St. Mary was given as a memorial to her husband by Mrs. C.C. Jackson and the large Victorian rectory and cloister were built as a memorial to her sister Mary Van Ness in 1899.

“The rectory [including servants quarters on the third floor] was built as a statement to say that the church and its rector were on equal ground with the churches and rectors back in New York and Boston, where the founders spent the winters,” said Garrett. “But, it also let the community know that the church wanted to be part of the people of the town.”

It was during the late 19th and early 20th centuries that the majority of the stained-glass windows were installed at St. Saviour’s, although at least five have been installed since 1966. While 10 of the 42 can be documented as Tiffanys, others are believed to have been made at Louis Comfort Tiffany’s New York studio. He is famous for “fabrille” or “art” glass, which has an iridescent effect. Tiffany achieved realism in his windows by molding or overlapping glass, rather than using the past techniques of simply applying descriptive paint or joining bits of colored or stained glass.

The three-paneled Risen Christ window was the first given to the church in 1886. Given in memory of John H. Helmuth, the Philadelphia father of a noted New York surgeon and medical professor, the window was above the original altar. The central panel depicts Christ ascending into heaven, while the side panels show twin angels accompanying him.

The large circular window at the back of the church was made in 1893 in memory of Anne James Pendleton, wife of Nathaniel Green Pendleton, a longtime congressman from Cincinnati. She was the daughter-in-law of Alexander Hamilton’s law partner, Nathaniel Pendleton, who was Hamilton’s “second” in his famous duel with Aaron Burr.

In 1902, a small gatehouse was donated and moved to the church property. A few years later, a larger hall was built as an addition to the parish house. Over the years, it has been used as an industrial school where local young people were trained in skills useful for employment in the summer colony, as a gymnasium, as a Navy barracks in both world wars and as a refuge for those burned out in the 1947 fire. Today, it is used by the Eden Nursery School, the Summer Youth Hostel, a thrift shop and by many community groups.

The devastating 1947 fire forever altered Bar Harbor’s way of life, even though the church itself was spared. Of the local 150 families burned out, 42 were members of St. Saviour’s. Prominent members of the summer colony chose not to rebuild in Bar Harbor, and moved to Northeast Harbor, home to Martha Stewart and David Rockefeller, among others.

While the community struggled during the next decade to re-establish itself as a tourist destination, the church became one. It also continued its outreach into the community, hiring a street pastor during the 1980s, and leadership inside the diocese embracing the controversial liturgical changes of the 1970s.

The 1990s found the congregation looking inward to its historic building and treasured stained-glass windows which desperately needed repair. Under the leadership of the Rev. Malcolm A. Hughes, St. Saviour’s embarked in 1995 on a $350,000 restoration and preservation project. It included repair of 10 stained-glass windows, as well as installation of new sound system and a lighting system that illuminates the windows that face Mount Desert Street.

Over the past two summers, an underground drainage system was installed to eliminate moisture damage to the building. Porches were restored, landscaping redesigned, and the walkway entrance to the main doors of the church paved with large granite blocks. Plans call for the project to be completed next year. Work still to be completed includes cleaning the interior stone, repairing the cloister, painting the rectory and installing a memorial garden.

In 1998, as the congregation was in the midst of the restoration project, Hughes was removed from his position by Bishop Chilton Knudsen for alleged sexual misconduct. The bishop’s predecessor, the Right Rev. Edward C. Chalfant, was removed from office after being charged by diocese employees with sexual harassment. As Hughes’ temporary replacement, Cox’s first task was to give the congregation the necessary time and tools to heal.

“Healing has been a very big part of my job as the interim pastor,” said Cox after last Sunday’s service. “One of the biggest things you need as an interim is to have patience because nobody trusts you at first. I find I am using different gifts at different times, but much of what is needed is to follow the process that is in place [for churches seeking new rectors.]”

Cox, who previously served churches in Maryland, lives in the rectory with his family. His wife, the Rev. Frances Cox, is the interim rector at St. Mary’s-by-the-Sea Episcopal Church in Northeast Harbor and St. Jude’s Chapel in Seal Harbor. Edwin Cox said that the couple hopes to stay in Maine permanently if they can secure positions at churches that are not too far from one another.

Rita Redfield of Somesville serves as senior warden at St. Saviour’s and has been active in the church for 24 years. She believes that part of the church’s commitment to the community should be to remain open as it has been.

“I believe we should keep the church open, but keep it safe,” she said before services last Sunday. “Over the years, we have had things stolen, including some silver, Oriental rugs and a stained-glass window. Some of the silver was found and returned, but nothing else was. We are one of the few churches in the state that is open almost all the time. We should be open not just for tourists but as a place of prayer and meditation.”

In an effort to accommodate visitors, St. Saviour’s holds a 5 p.m. Saturday service in summer months. While Saturday afternoon Masses are now a staple in Roman Catholic churches, they are rare in Episcopal ones. Attendance fluctuates depending on the season, said Cox. While summer residents increase attendance at weekend worship services to nearly 100, winter regulars are too busy to leave their businesses to attend church. Winter attendance averages about 80, he said.

The excellent acoustics in St. Saviour’s and the fact that it can seat 500 people make it attractive for performers. Consequently, many concerts are held at St. Saviour’s. The church considers providing space for such events part of its mission and does not charge most performance groups rent.

Garrett, who is a member of the Bar Harbor Future Committee, said that the church’s self-reflection is part of a larger process going on in the town, in Acadia National Park and around the state.

“As we move from being a summer community toward being a retirement community,” he said, “our church ministry should be directed in a somewhat different way. But the future can be very bright if the love of God is shown in the lives of the people in the congregation.”

In their own way, that is the same thing the founders of St. Saviour’s and the people who gave stained-glass windows in memory of loved ones sought to show in constructing the church – the love of God.

“If we value the past, but don’t live in it,” observed Cox, “we can take the best of the past as a challenge to the present.”