Although her role in the Tremont Congregational Church in Bass Harbor did not come with a job description, Nola Buchanan, wife of the Rev. Wayne Buchanan, works in the church too.

With training in social work and human development, she has always been interested in working with kids, Buchanan says. She has served as principal of Life Christian Academy on Route 3 in Ellsworth.

Because she feels that her gift is her ability to work with children, Buchanan, like Robin Tardy, also teaches Sunday school. And she runs the children’s music program. And, like Tardy, she believes it is important to be supportive of her husband’s work.

But she says that’s no different from the way any husband or wife should feel about each other’s occupation.

Buchanan, 47, grew up the daughter of missionaries. She remembers sitting with her mom in the front row of her dad’s church, wearing patent-leather shoes and always told to be on her best behavior.

“Things are different today,” she says. Her children, Justin, a teenager, and Amaris, a sixth-grader, can wear jeans and sit in the back of the church.

Does she feel overburdened or overobligated? Buchanan says it’s quite the opposite. People in her congregation would be concerned if Buchanan or her family were overcommitted, she says.

Still, she notes that her husband frequently refers to her during his sermons. One member of the congregation even jokingly offered to bring a water gun to church to drench Buchanan’s husband every time he made a family reference from the pulpit.

When she married Wayne, neither knew how to set boundaries, she says. They always had someone in need living with them and many times served as a crisis intervention center.

In one of their first parishes, Buchanan says, she was contacted by somebody who knew a young woman in need of a place to go for Bible study.

As she drove into a yard to pick her up, Buchanan saw the young woman with her child running toward her, screaming, “He’s going to kill me!” As the woman jumped into Buchanan’s yellow Capri, a man carrying a large concrete block ran toward them.

As he raised his arms, Buchanan drove off just as the block landed on the roof of the car. She was able to swing the car around, but encountered the man again, this time blocking the only exit. As the man tried to grab the car, Buchanan floored the gas and escaped.

On another occasion, a woman told her husband she was suffering from cancer. They took her in, and Wayne Buchanan often drove her to chemotherapy. Gradually, the woman’s diet choices made the Buchanans suspicious. It turned out she wasn’t ill at all.

For the sake of their marriage, and perhaps their sanity, the Buchanans had to accept the fact that they could not help every person who came to them, Nola Buchanan says.

So now the Buchanan household has an answering machine – just a small way of setting boundaries.

“We both have important gifts to share,” she says.