ORONO – Connect with God. Connect with each other. Connect with the community. Those are the three goals of a new church in this small town dominated by the University of Maine.

Since its first service Easter Sunday, the Orono Community Church has nearly doubled in size, organized a praise band and hired a full-time pastor. It appears to be succeeding in drawing a mix of university faculty, staff and students as well as Orono residents to services at the community center on Bennoch Road.

“To us what’s most important is a relationship with God, with each other and with the community,” said Douglas Palmeter, campus director of Campus Crusade for Christ at UMaine and a church founder. “We are a church that respects the Bible and treats it as true. We’re offering spiritual growth to the community and a service with contemporary music.”

Palmeter, described by several church leaders as the “sparkplug” of the congregation, has been in ministry 25 years, 15 of them at the university. During his years in Orono, Palmeter said, it’s been difficult waiting for the right combination of people to come together so the church could succeed and grow.

“The waiting has been tough,” he said. “We didn’t want to push people, so we had to be patient to get the core families who could make this really work. The biggest challenge over the years has been to be patient and wait for things to develop in God’s time.”

Like other evangelical churches, Orono Community Church is organized into worship teams that hold home meetings in the community. The team approach, according to Palmeter, helps spread out the workload and responsibility of the church’s ministry and keep founders and the new minister from “burning out.”

“We needed to bring together the right people to form the teams to carry out the desires for what we want to do,” he said. “The home groups is where a lot of the meat of the work of church takes place.”

Other churches in town include St. Mary of the Assumption Catholic Church, Orono United Methodist Church, the Church of Universal Fellowship and Faith Baptist Church.

In addition to Campus Crusade for Christ on the UM campus, the Roman Catholic Newman Center and Protestant Wilson Center are located adjacent to campus on College Avenue. Non-Christians religions also are well-represented at the university.

Before the Orono Community Church began holding services in town, Palmeter and his family and students, seeking a more contemporary approach to worship, often traveled 15 miles south to Hampden to attend services at the Church of the Open Door.

“My three sons, students and others kept asking, ‘Why can’t we just go down the street to church?'” said Palmeter. “Every few years someone comes through Orono and talks about trying to start a church. It just didn’t seem the right time to get on the wagon, but about 18 months ago, we talked with a couple who seemed willing to work with us. We prayed about it over that summer, but then, they withdrew. We saw that the need was still here. The desire was still here. We decided just to trust God and see what happened.”

The Rev. Carl Bergman, a church planner for the Christian Reform Church, arrived Sept. 1. Over the past 7 years, he’s helped start new churches in Connecticut, New Hampshire and Massachusetts. He is committed to contemporary worship techniques that include a band playing Christian music, and Powerpoint presentations to explain Bible passages and project the words of songs on the back wall of the stage at the community center.

But it’s not the worship style that sets OCC apart. What makes the new congregation unique is that fact that nearly half the worshipers on a given Sunday morning are children under 12 and college students.

“We want to enhance the role of every member and consider every member a minister,” said the 50-year-old pastor. “OCC is a team-led church. I am serving as the minister of worship since within the structure of OCC, my role is to lead the worship team that is responsible for connecting [the congregation] with God.”

Curtis Grenier, 25, of Bangor used to attend another church with his wife, but prefers being part of OCC.

“I like the idea of being part of starting a church,” he said after a recent service. “I like the excitement and the focus on families in their late 20s. I find there’s more quality to the relationships and friendships here.”

Clay Kirby of Orono also belonged to a different congregation in another town. The 44-year-old entomologist with the University Extension Center plays bass guitar in the praise band and appreciates being able to attend church in the town where he lives and works.

“I like the fact that I can walk to church in the community where my wife and her father grew up,” he said. “It’s informal and a team-led church, it’s set up so there is time to visit after the service. People love to stay and talk and we do a lot together outside of church.”

Bergman, who is on loan from his denomination to OCC, said that as the church continues to grow it will face new challenges.

“Staying true to the vision is important,” said the pastor. “It’s easier to connect and have meaningful relationships with a smaller congregation. As it grows, it will take an intensive effort to connect and maintain those meaningful relationships.”

Services are held at 10 a.m. Sundays in the Keith Anderson Community Center, 8 Bennoch Road, Orono. For information, call 866-2605.