Building on Hope New Lutheran congregation finding a home amid castoffs

BANGOR – The pulpit was Catholic. The altar was Lutheran. The minister was an Assemblies of God preacher. And the building belonged to the Odd Fellows.

Hope Lutheran Church on outer Union Street is joyfully furnishing its newly acquired home with castoffs in a secondhand building. The small congregation bought the two-story white frame structure from the Odd Fellows in July and gradually is making it look more like a house of worship than a meeting hall.

The Communion rail, chancel chairs, sanctuary lamp, table candelabra and pulpit with a crucifix on its front came from the recently closed St. Casimir Catholic Church in Maynard, Mass.

The 40-year-old altar was given to Hope Lutheran by Redeemer Lutheran Church in Cape Elizabeth. This summer, a 94-year-old congregant at that church carved a new altar, so members were delighted to give their old one to the smaller Bangor congregation, which had been using a portable altar.

In addition, an elderly Bangor woman who was leaving her home for an assisted living center gave her organ to the church because she wanted it to go somewhere it would be played often.

Hope Lutheran has come a long way since 1996, when three people began meeting in private homes for Bible study with the Rev. Paul Nielsen, pastor of Lutheran Church of the Resurrection in Waterville.

Attendance at services now averages 35 to 40 worshippers, according to Don Colageo, the minister-in-training who serves as Hope Lutheran’s vicar and spiritual leader.

Lutherans trace their faith back to the German reformer Martin Luther, who sought to change doctrine and practices of the Roman Catholic Church in the 16th century. He objected to the teaching that a person is saved by faith and doing good works.

Luther believed that, according to the Bible, a person is made just in God’s eyes only by trusting in Jesus’ accomplishments for humanity, distinct from any good works that person might do.

It’s that concept of being saved through grace rather than good works that appealed to Calageo.

“I want people to see that they’ve been baptized and lean on that as opposed to asking the question, ‘Do I feel like a Christian today?'” he said.

Colageo, 48, will be ordained in February by the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod. Raised a Roman Catholic, he was a minister in the Assemblies of God – a Pentecostal denomination – in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

“In the Lutheran Church, I heard the Gospel unadulterated,” he said of why he switched denominations. “The [Lutheran] Church is grace alone, faith alone, Scripture alone. Here, I can preach, teach and witness in the law and Gospel without muddling the two. The law and the Gospel both come from God but serve two completely different functions.”

In the United States, the two main Lutheran denominations are the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America and the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod. The former was created by uniting earlier Lutheran denominations. The latter is more conservative theologically.

Hope Lutheran belongs to the Missouri Synod, which has 2.6 million members in the United States, but just three congregations in Maine. Bangor’s only other Lutheran church, Redeemer Lutheran, 540 Essex St., is part of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America, which has about 4 million members in the United States.

Fae Gilbride of Bangor is one of Hope Lutheran’s founding members.

She helped get the church organized in 1996 when she moved to the area and saw there was no Missouri Synod church in the area. Gilbride works in the admissions office at Bangor Theological Seminary.

“I’m conservative by nature and appreciate the conservative approach of the denomination,” she said. “At the same time, I like the open dialogue between churches that I see at the seminary. My job lets me see how denominations do or don’t interact. Spiritually, I’m [at Hope Lutheran] because the focus is on grace and the Gospel. It’s biblically based and has a defined liturgy. I like that.”

Gilbride said that she appreciates the gifts that have been given to the church and is eager for other renovations to be completed so that the building looks more like a house of worship.

“I love the architecture of churches,” she said. “The Odd Fellows Hall is not that appealing to me visually, but the grace of God can be found there and that’s what’s more important.”

Worship at Hope Lutheran Church, 1520 Union St., Bangor, begins at 9 a.m. Sunday, with Sunday school at 10:30 a.m. For information, call 990-5900.