BANGOR – After a two-year national search, Columbia Street Baptist Church found its new senior pastor less than 10 miles away.

Peter K. Sprague, 47, was approved by the congregation earlier this month. He will deliver his first sermon from his new pulpit at 10:15 a.m. Sunday.

“I am looking forward to preaching and ministering to people in Bangor,” he said in a phone interview from his new office on Columbia Street.

Sprague has served as pastor of Grace Bible Church in Holden for 12 years. Previously, he served congregations in Gouldsboro and Steuben.

He said he was looking for more opportunities for service to a larger congregation. Between 40 and 50 people regularly worship at the Holden church, while 150 to 200 worship at Columbia Street Baptist.

Born in Bar Harbor, Sprague earned his bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering at the University of Rochester and worked as a chemical engineer for Sun Oil Co.

He felt called to the ministry in 1981 and earned his master of divinity degree from Detroit Baptist Theological Seminary and is working on a master of theology degree through the Reformed Theological Seminary in Orlando, Fla.

Sprague and his wife, Teresa, plan to work closely together in their new ministry, as they have in the past.

Teresa Sprague, 46, is a native of Milbridge. The couple enjoys hiking, running and biking together.

Founded in 1845 as a mission church of the city’s First Baptist Church, the Columbia Street church’s early pastors ministered to the sailors, loggers and “ladies of the evening” who flooded the city’s waterfront.