Kirk Winters wants to plant a rock in every county in Maine. The evangelical minister doesn’t mean the kind of stones that dot the landscape. Winters, 38, of Glenburn is talking about the rock on which Jesus said he would build his church. The pastor is “wholehearted” in his quest to reach that goal and wants churchgoers to be the same.

“When we say it’s our mission to turn the people of Maine into wholehearted followers of Jesus Christ,” he said in an interview, “we want people to become completely and sincerely devoted to the teachings of Jesus Christ. It’s not so much about learning what to say and do on Sunday as walking out your life every day in accordance with the lessons learned from the Bible.”

One year after the Rock Church opened in a former Pentecostal church at the corner of Ohio Street and Finson Road, Winters’ congregation was growing so quickly that this month he began conducting two services each Sunday, at 9 and 10:30 a.m.

Even during the summer months, the 170-seat sanctuary often was filled, Winter said.

He gave God the credit for the rapid growth, but said that his roots in the area had helped.

Winters grew up attending Glad Tidings Church in Bangor and graduated in 1986 from Brewer High School. He graduated four years later from the University of Maine with a degree in business administration.

After a few years at Bath Iron Works, Winters left the secular world to attend Bible college. He graduated from Rhema Bible Training Center in the mid-1990s and felt called by God to return to Maine to start a nondenominational church after a stint in Jacksonville, Fla.

In May 1998, Winters and his wife, Lisa Winters, moved back to Maine and rented a house in Portland where they conducted Bible study with six adults and eight children. Six years later, Winters had baptized 100 people, the congregation had grown to nearly 200, had a permanent home in South Portland, and was debt free.

“In early 2005, we felt God was calling us home to Bangor,” Winters said. “We started the church that summer and moved into the building last October. I think God set it up. We just walked into an existing building with 101/2 acres, which allows us room to grow.”

Through his extensive network of friends and family in the area, Winters has built church membership and programs so rapidly that he already has hired two assistants.

David Dube, 34, a former member of Winters’ congregation in Portland, moved to Glenburn from Boston last month to work part-time as the church administrator and pay attention to the business aspects of the growing congregation.

“The Rock Church [in Portland] showed my wife and I how to have a personal relationship with Christ,” he said after his first Sunday service in Bangor. “Through that relationship, I felt called to the ministry.

“I’m very excited to be here,” he said. “From our [earlier] visits, we can see the Lord moving here as more and more people are coming to church.”

Winters’ nephew, the Rev. Nicholas Bemis, 23, of Levant, works part-time as the youth pastor. A recent graduate of Zion Bible College in Barrington, R.I., he ministers to the 30 to 35 teenagers who regularly attend the Saturday night youth group called Oneway.

“We set it up like a rave,” he said, referring to Radical Audio Visual Experience or the all-night dance parties popular in the late 1980s and ’90s. “We black out the windows in the sanctuary and take out all the chairs. We have a mirrored dance ball and a smoke machine.”

The youth group meets on Saturday nights to give participants an alternative to parties that might include alcohol or drugs and not be supervised by adults, according to Bemis.

“Here, they can experience God and the presence of God in a setting that’s relevant to them,” he said.

Being able to relate to and interact with people her own age is what draws Marissa Rivard, 23, of Glenburn to the Rock Church – even though she most often attends South Levant Baptist Church, where her uncle, the Rev. Phil Bean is pastor. There, she is the youngest adult in the building.

Rivard said that while she occasionally takes in a Sunday service at the Bangor church, she regularly attends the Thursday evening meetings of Connect, the ministry for young adults in their 20s and early 30s.

“It’s nice coming here to be with people my own age who share my beliefs,” she said.

Winters believes the church’s contemporary worship style does not appeal just to the under-40 crowd.

Marie Smith, 69, of Bangor began attending the Rock Church in December. She had been attending a small church nearby that she did not identify.

“I came in the door and I just felt like I belonged,” she said after an August service. “They put me to work right away and I like that. God has a message, through this ministry, for me. And people here are so full of joy, it’s wonderful.”

Smith said that she helps the pastor out in the office with “little nickel and dime stuff.”

Bernard “Bunny” Doak, 67, of Orrington has known Winters since the pastor was a child. For more than 15 years Doak attended Abundant Life Church and oversaw construction of its $2.5 million building on outer Broadway. He was happy to find a congregation he could be part of after leaving Abundant Life.

“He’s real,” Doak said of Winters. “He’s very open and very honest. You can read him like a book. And he has a heart for people.”

Dennis Hutchins, 41, who lives near the church, attended for the first time in mid-August. He and his family were church shopping, but liked what they experienced and the fact that there is a Sunday school program their young son can attend.

“It’s different,” Hutchins said of the worship style, “but the teaching is solid. It’s not the same old thing.

“It’s full,” he said. “They’ve got 10 pounds of people in a 5-pound bag. That means it’s healthy. I think we’ll be back.”

The Rock Church will hold what it calls a grand opening with services at 9 and 10:30 a.m. Sunday, Sept. 17. A party with a bounce palace, petting zoo and refreshments will be held between services. For information, call 942-9977.