SOMESVILLE – Two years ago, Bangor Theological Seminary started a program designed to develop lay leadership and then to empower it in churches in Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont. A new session for the Certificate in Small Church Leadership Program is scheduled to begin Sept. 8 in four locations in the three states.

Four members of the Somesville Union Meeting House were among the 43 men and women who graduated in May after completing the first two-year course. Linda Smith of Pretty Marsh, William Fanazick of Trenton, the Rev. John MacDuffie, retired, of Bernard and Marjorie Reed of Bass Harbor earned certificates in Small Church Leadership in May. They started the program in September 1999.

“I already was an active lay leader in the church,” said Smith, in explaining her reasons for enrolling in the program. “It looked like a course that would help me with leadership skills and affirm what I was doing.”

Reed, on the other hand, said that she felt “called” to the program and would have taken the course even if she’d had to attend alone. The course, however, emphasizes a team approach to leadership and encourages participation by at least two people from each congregation. Reed described how that worked for the participants from the Somesville church.

“We bonded like brothers and sister,” she said. “It was a joy. After a few sessions, we seemed to just fall into certain slots based on what you were good at. It was a wonderful sharing of gifts.”

The theological seminary designed the program specifically for the small congregations in northern New England, according to Gary Hunter, director of the program. Its focus is to help churches “bloom where you are planted.” The context and the culture in which a congregation finds itself is the primary source of information and experience from which each of the participants draw as they examine their own ministry and initiate a “sustainable ministry project,” he said.

The Somesville Union Meeting House qualifies as a small church. It has fewer than 100 members and an average attendance of 50 at Sunday services. The Congregational church is rich in history, but low on financial resources. And, like a majority of mainline churches in the United States, most of its members are older than 50. If the Meeting House follows the trends in many of Maine’s houses of worship, those members will not be replaced as they age and, eventually, die.

But unlike many other Protestant churches around the state, the Meeting House can afford a full-time pastor. Hundreds of small churches struggle to survive by paying a pastor part time and keeping their aging, often historical, buildings from crumbling. More and more members of such churches are turning to each other rather than to a minister or their denominational hierarchy in order to continue their work.

Much of the day-to-day operations at small churches are falling to lay leaders, especially in congregations that cannot afford a full-time minister. Lay leaders do everything from leading services to teaching Sunday school to cutting the church lawn and repairing the building. They also serve on boards and committees and often function as liaisons to other churches and the larger community.

The four members from the Somesville church knew when they entered the program that their pastor, the Rev. David Stillman, was going to retire shortly after their own graduations. Smith said that because they knew the church would soon be involved in a search for a new minister, they decided to focus their project on aiding their congregation in that process.

The four conceived and designed a computer program that maps out a strategy churches can use to understand and describe their congregations to job candidates. It also included a database to help sort the qualities and interests of applicants and match them with the qualities and interests of the congregation.

The team gave the rights to the program to the Maine Seacoast Mission. That will allow the program to be disseminated to other congregations, at the same time helping to raise needed funds for the ocean-going ministry.

Other projects designed by the first class of the Certificate in Small Church Leadership Program included after-school programs for children, spiritual retreats for congregations, a literacy program and a 200th anniversary celebration, according to Hunter. Thirty-six churches from five denominations, including one independent community church, were represented in the 1999-2001 group. Twenty of the churches were in Maine, while New Hampshire and Vermont were represented by eight congregations each.

The 2002-03 program has been modified and fine-tuned based on feedback from May’s graduates, according to Hunter. The program is designed for churches that average fewer than 100 worshippers per Sunday. It seeks to help lay leaders work with ministers to match the needs of the larger community with the gifts of the church. The course also teaches individual members of congregations some practical aspects of leadership.

“The goal of the program is to grow the church spiritually,” said Hunter. “Success is not measured by the number of people in the pews each Sunday. However, if churches are paying attention to their ministry in a spiritual sense, their membership will increase because of the nature of that ministry.”

Smith said that during the course she learned to see ministry as a shared responsibility between the pastor and the laity. She also learned to celebrate “smallness.”

“I discovered how to recognize and celebrate people’s gifts,” she explained, “no matter how small. We’re all a part of God’s church and we must really celebrate everyone.”

Since BTS advertised the program in Christian Century magazine, Hunter has received inquiries from church-related organizations from Washington, D.C., New York and Alberta, Canada. All expressed an interest in the program and some asked for copies of the curriculum brochure, said Hunter. While he is unaware of such programs in other parts of the country, Hunter stopped short of saying BTS was starting a national trend with the program.

“I don’t know if I would call Bangor Theological Seminary a ‘trailblazer’ in this case,” he said, “but it seems that there is a great interest in this program, probably because there is an unmet need for such a program, especially among many congregations that are a part of the mainline Protestant church.”

Hunter, who also manages the BTS bookstore on the Bangor campus, described his own feelings about administering the program.

“The most challenging as well as the most rewarding aspect in providing leadership for this program has been in making new acquaintances and meeting new people – listening to their stories of both frustration and blessing – over such a large geographic area,” said Hunter.

“I have encountered so many people who, against seemingly insurmountable odds, want to try again to engage in meaningful and productive ministries in their communities. This is so encouraging,” he added. “There is a whole lot of hope at work out there. I consider it a privilege to be involved in this program.”

For more information, on Bangor Theological Seminary’s Certificate in Small Church Leadership, call Hunter at 1-800-287-6781 or visit the seminary’s Web site at www.bts.edu/smallchurch.