BANGOR – When Bangor Theological Seminary was founded, its students would ride horseback to churches throughout rural Maine for Sunday services and return Sabbath nights for animated discussions on religious issues at the seminary.

More recently, the students would go to class and then, busy with the rest of their lives, rarely see each other.

One student, Terri Bracy, who lives in the Pond House on campus and will graduate in May, decided to change that. In January, she started a Sunday evening discussion group in her apartment.

“Because many of us work part-time and attend school, there isn’t the time or the opportunity to talk about things like ‘Who is Christ to you?'” she said last month. “That is such an important question for us.”

Now that discussion has turned to the seminary’s proposal to sell off its 10-acre campus and move across town to Husson College. Many of the students are open to the idea.

The board of trustees is scheduled to consider such options when it meets in May.

This semester, just 19 students live on the Bangor campus with the seminary as their landlord. They rent apartments in houses once occupied by faculty for 90 percent of market value.

A native of midcoast Maine who lived in Boston for 30 years, Bracy came to BTS three years ago at midlife. Demographically, she is the seminary’s average student.

The idea for the discussion group was sparked by her memories of taking her son to the pediatrician 20 years ago.

“I always learned more in the waiting room from the other mothers than I ever did from the doctor,” Bracy said.

The Sunday Salon meets from 7 to 9 p.m. each week, and people drop in if they can. Bracy wanted it to be “low-key, without an agenda.” Until this month, conversation focused on God, spirit, faith and professors’ grading quirks. For the past two Sundays, the talk has been about the Husson proposal.

Seminary President William Imes has met twice with students in Bangor since the beginning of March and attended a Sunday Salon to discuss the proposal. Details of the proposal have not been worked out. It is possible that the students living on the seminary could stay put until they graduate, Imes has said, but new students could be on their own to find housing.

Husson’s traditional dormitories would not meet the needs of the seminary’s typically middle-aged students who, in the past, have moved into BTS housing with spouses, children, pets and a lifetime of accumulated possessions.

“We have to get out of the landlord business, especially with these old buildings that require a lot of maintenance,” Imes said last week. “Perhaps we could sell those and buy a newer building that would be less expensive to maintain.”

Eric Gagnon, 39, lives with his wife and three children in a three-bedroom apartment on the Bangor campus. Last year, Gagnon left a job in law enforcement in Massachusetts to study for the ministry. The fact that the seminary had housing available was a big factor in his decision to attend BTS, he said this week.

“There are so many decisions to be made that it wouldn’t do anybody any good to speculate,” he said of the possible move to Husson. “I think it’s positive to include faculty, staff, alumni and students at the earliest stages, but until all the logistical things are in place, there aren’t any particular bridges to cross.”

While short-term concerns about where residential students will live if the move is approved have been aired, most students have expressed a commitment to the institution’s survival, Bracy said.

Andrew J. Geaghan, 21, is the youngest student at BTS and works as the youth pastor at East Orrington Congregational Church. Geaghan said this week that he “grew up sitting in the church choir loft” because his grandmother is the church choir director and his mother sings in the choir.

“I’m not opposed to [the move to Husson],” he said. “I think the school has a lot to offer academically and socially. It would be a shame to see [BTS] die because we’re stuck in a facility we can’t maintain.

“I love the facility,” he said. “It’s a beautiful campus with an interesting perspective on [Bangor], but I’d rather see it stay alive than stuck in one spot.”

As a Congregationalist, Geaghan believes that the people, not the building, represent the church.

Bracy said this week that for the past two Sunday Salon sessions, students of all denominations have discussed and agreed with that definition.

Jesus did not limit his preaching to one particular building, Imes has pointed out.

“The church is definitely about the people,” Geaghan said. “The building is the meeting house, but the church is the people. We have the relationship with God. The building can’t do anything. It’s just a place that we can gather in and be together in spirit.”

Imes has said that that attitude is the key to the institution’s surviving another two centuries.