WINTERPORT – The first time the Rev. W.E. Strout, pastor of Calvary Apostolic church, tried to resign, his congregation shouted him down. Last March, the 40-year-old minister found himself torn between what God was calling him to do and what church members wanted.

God won out.

Last week, Strout preached his final sermon as minister of the white church atop the big hill on Route 1A in Winterport. The minister, his wife and two children headed south in an RV on the first leg of a trip that will take them to dozens of churches around the country. Strout said a few days before he left that God had called him to be an evangelist rather than a pastor.

The minister plans to speak to other ministers and church leaders about ways to foster church growth – something Strout knows about firsthand. Under his leadership, membership at the Winterport church increased six-fold.

“To be real honest,” said Strout as he prepared to leave his native state, “our heart is broken that God has called us out of here. I’d never planned on leaving Winterport.”

Raised in Ellsworth, Strout began preaching in area nursing homes at age 15. He attended Texas Bible College Houston for 21/2 years and was home on break when the college junior was called to lead Calvary Tabernacle in Rockland at the age 20.

He and his wife, Debbie, were married on a Friday and took over the church the following Wednesday after a brief honeymoon. He stayed there three years and earned his degree through a correspondence program.

Strout resigned from that church in 1985, unsure where he would minister next. The same day he announced his resignation, a board member from the Winterport church called him and asked if he’d be interested in leading that small congregation. He took 10 days off, then moved his family into the apartment on the third floor of the church, located in a former sea captain’s house in downtown Winterport.

“It was in a little building on Main Street across from the library,” said Strout the week before he left the state. “It was old and drafty. The snow piled up under the windows after a storm. The house had been used by the church since it got started 1945, and had about 30 members when I started there.”

Within eight months, the congregation had outgrown the space and the pastor told the Lord that his church needed $14,000 to purchase land for a new building. Strout recalled that he was at a meeting when the planning board refused to let a developer subdivide the 17-acre plot where the church is now located. Strout said he followed the owner out of the Town Hall to the parking lot and offered him $14,000 for the property.

“He accepted, and it felt like a gift from God,” said Strout. “One-and-a-half years later, we built the church. It was 60 feet by 70 feet, with about 8,400 square feet on two floors. Five years ago we put on an addition. We now have 22,000 square feet of space, and the sanctuary seats 400.”

In 1990, the congregation came up with a unique way to strengthen its finances. Church members voted to built a house on the edge of the property, sell it and use the profits to pay off the mortgage.

The two-story cape with attached garage was built almost entirely with volunteer labor over a seven-month period. Church members began cutting trees and clearing the lot in July 1990. Some church members hauled boards, other hammered nails and some bought food and drinks for those working on the building.

Members of United Pentecostal churches in Bangor, Waterville and Augusta pitched in on the interior. The insulation was installed by the women of the church. About a year after the project was begun, the house was sold and the church was close to being debt-free.

Strout said he always felt his “mission field was Winterport.” During his 17 years in the community, he performed weddings and funerals for members of the community who were not members of his church.

When the Winterport United Methodist Church closed its doors five years ago, Calvary Apostolic Church offered to house the community food cupboard, which serves residents of Winterport and Frankfort. During the Ice Storm of ’98, the church served as shelter for those without electricity, and it is now the town’s official emergency shelter. The church also is used for school DARE programs twice a year.

“Pastor Strout’s been a tremendous asset to the community for the four years I’ve been here,” said Leo LaChance Sr., Winterport town manager. “He and the church have been strong advocates for the poor, the disenfranchised and the homeless people in the community. The Interfaith Ministry Council oversees the food cupboard, but without [Strout’s] leadership, we would not have been as successful as we are.”

Leroy Mayhew, a member of the church’s Board of Elders, said the minister had focused not just on the community as a whole, but on individual families.

“He’s built strong families here in the community,” said Mayhew, who lives in Winterport. “He took families that were not very well off – had a low income – and built up their confidence and strengthened them. There are a good number of people in the community who call him pastor, who aren’t members of the church.”

After 2,160 sermons in Winterport, Strout, his wife and two children, Shanna, 16, and Wes, 11, headed for North Carolina last week and a two-year series of speaking engagements. As winter in their home state wanes, they will return to Strout’s parents’ home in Ellsworth and visit the many friends they have in Winterport.

Strout’s successor, the Rev. Kyle Stoops of Flora, Ill., arrived in mid-January. Strout said he expected the new pastor to continue the same pattern of growth the church has been on the past few years.

“My advice to him is to minister to the families of the town in any way, shape or form possible,” said the former pastor of Winterport Apostolic Church.