ELLSWORTH – A high school classmate of the Rev. Barbara Clarke once asked her whether she belonged to “that holy rollers church that meets in the garage.”

Taken aback, the teenage Clarke replied, “We’re not holy rollers, we’re Episcopalians.”

Members of St. Dunstan’s Episcopal Church in Ellsworth this weekend will mark the 50th anniversary of the congregation’s move from the “holy garage,” located behind the post office on Spruce Street, to its permanent home at 134 State St.

Clarke, who was ordained in 1996, was baptized and confirmed in the two-car garage where a handful of Episcopalians in western Hancock County began holding services in 1951. For five years before that, they had met in homes.

The church quickly outgrew the “holy garage” and the State Street parcel was purchased in 1955. The first service in St. Dunstan’s new building was held on Feb. 16, 1958, and it was dedicated on March 9 of that year.

The path to the priesthood for Clarke, 67, rector of St. Patrick’s Episcopal Church in Brewer, began more than half a century ago in the “holy garage.” She began attending when her brother, a gifted musician, was asked to play the organ for the Episcopalians.

Clarke said that her father had stopped attending Congregational church with the rest of the family but started regularly attending St. Dunstan’s. The priest said she began attending St. Dunstan’s because she wanted to see what it was that drew her father to a worship service held in a garage.

“It was called ‘holy garage’ because of the sense of spirit there,” she said earlier this week. “Worshipping there did not seem odd at all. There was a special spirit there that even as a child I knew was different from the big church on the hill. It’s where I began to see the possibility of community in a church.”

That sense of spirit is one of the things the congregation plans to honor this weekend, according to Georgianna Pulver of Lamoine, who helped organize the jubilee.

The celebration will begin at 5 p.m. Saturday with a musical celebration at the church. It will feature Michelle Dokka, pianist and music minister; organist John W. Tremblay; cellist Bill Meyers; accompanist Daniel Conte and the St. Dunstan’s choir. One service will be held at 10 a.m. Sunday with an ice cream social afterward.

For information, call St. Dunstan’s at 667-5495 or contact Pulver, 664-2433.

jharrison@bangordailynews.net

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