BREWER – When Gary Turgeon’s wife, Rosemary, talked him into attending a Baptist church service in 1989, he wasn’t happy about it.

He felt like he had a church – the church he’d been born and raised in, and still attended. He sat through the entire service with arms folded across his chest, angry and resentful.

The next day, a Baptist neighbor shared “God’s plan of salvation” with Turgeon. He went to a nearby seminary and asked a friend, “Will I go to heaven?”

The cleric replied, “I don’t know, Gary.”

The next day, Turgeon, who worked in home construction and remodeling, was working on a house in his hometown of Granby, Mass.

He was talking to himself, wondering aloud, Who are these people who talk about Christ this way? How can they guarantee I will get into heaven?

“Suddenly, I cried out, ‘God save me,’ just as Paul writes in Acts,” recalled Turgeon, now pastor of Twin City Baptist Church.

“That’s when I realized that it’s not about being a Baptist or a Catholic or a Protestant. It’s about knowing Jesus Christ as my personal savior,” he said.

Turgeon was hired in June to replace the church’s founding pastor, the Rev. Robert Treadwell, who retired last year.

The congregation of about 80 families struggled with the task of searching out a new minister, according to Virgil Phinney of Veazie.

The chairman of the board of trustees said that it was difficult because the church had never been through a search process before.

As the church, located on North Main Street on a hill overlooking the Penobscot River, worked to define what it wanted in a minister, Turgeon, his wife and three children were living in Lancaster County, Pa., trying to start a new church.

As New Englanders, the family did not feel readily accepted, and after three years there, Turgeon said, it seemed that “God was closing doors.”

“When I walked in the door of this church,” he said from his office, “I knew this would be our home. There’s a sweet spirit of unity in this church. It’s family-oriented, but it’s not so big that you feel lost in a crowd. It’s not so formal that I feel stifled. I have a real sense of humor, so we laugh lot.”

Turgeon, a graduate of Boston Bible College who is performing his pastoral duties while overseeing the construction of the church’s first parsonage, said that he recently baptized seven people at a Wednesday night service.

The minister added that he also brings to the congregation skills as a counselor and is able to “give people the tools to build healthy relationships.”

Phinney said that the pastor “has a compassionate way with our people and reaches out to them effectively.”

He also is able to bridge the generations, appealing to young people, yet dealing in a sophisticated way with the elderly, who make up a large portion of the congregation, Phinney said.

Turgeon said that his background and experience are more suited to northern New England than they were to central Pennsylvania. He added that his own spiritual journey makes it easier for him to connect with others who might be seeking answers to spiritual questions as he was.

The pastor believes that coming from another denomination “enables me to minister to people that are coming to this church from other traditions,” he said.

“But my ministry is about people,” he said. “I want to be a blessing to people.”

Services at Twin City Baptist Church are held at 10:30 a.m. and 6 p.m. Sunday and at 7 p.m. Wednesday. The church is located at 559 North Main St., Brewer. For information, call 989-6852.