Excerpts from “Lively Stones”

Celebrating the past, claiming the present and preparing for the future: 2003-2016

Sat, 12/10/2016 - 8:15am

This is the final excerpt from “Lively Stones,” a book on the 250-year history of the local Congregational Church.

A new era began to dawn at the Boothbay Harbor Congregational Church in 2003. Emerging from some hard times and internal conflicts, growing in its awareness of new social needs and norms, the church needed to envision a new future rooted in its great ecclesiastical traditions, faithful to its history while recognizing the challenges and the opportunities of the present. Continuity and change were the order of the day.

A leader was needed who could find the right balance – recognizing the values of the past while seeing the needs of the present and the new things God was doing in the Church and in the world. The capacity to forge into the future while maintaining such balance was a special gift found in the Rev. Dr. Sarah Foulger, who was called to serve the Congregational Church of Boothbay Harbor as interim minister in 2003, and later as the called and settled pastor. She sensed a divine calling to make this happen with the help of staff and willing volunteers. And notably Rev. Foulger was the first woman pastor called to serve the Boothbay Congregational Church in its 250-year history.

Nothing captures the power of her call as well as Rev. Foulger’s own words delivered in her sermon on the occasion of her tenth anniversary (2014) as its pastor:

Back in 1987, the year we were enjoying watching Brian Boitano and Katerina Witt, the year we were eating Ben and Jerry’s Cherry Garcia ice cream for the first time, the year Russ and I had a 2-year old and a 4-year old, the year I helped found the Presbyterian Church in Topsham, I fell in love with John Murray, the first minister of the congregation here in Boothbay. I read everything I could lay my hands on about Murray, who was, in the late eighteenth century, the leader of Presbyterianism in the State of Maine.

And on the day trips we took with the kids down here to the beautiful Boothbay peninsula, as we drove by this very church which was, at that point, still pressed right up against Townsend Avenue, my heart skipped a beat, and I allowed myself a moment of fantasy, wondering what it might be like to serve the congregation John Murray helped to found. Now I’ve been here eleven years, ten as your settled pastor. And it has been just as thrilling and interesting as I imagined it might be all those years ago.

The years since Rev. Foulger arrived in Boothbay have been peppered with challenging and heartbreaking national and world events some of which were ushered in by 9/11 as a prelude. Terrorist bombings have escalated around the world; natural disasters seem to have increased. The communication revolution has made the world a much smaller place and social networking elicits action and reaction even before news can be printed. Perspective and vision are needed to navigate such turbulent waters.

Visionaries help possibilities become realities. Within a church, visionaries who utilize simple, clear biblical images often become the conduit for the Spirit of God to do amazing things. And Rev. Foulger reclaimed the image of “lively stones” (see I Peter 2:5) as a driving force for the church during this period of reconstruction. Rev. John Murray (founding pastor in the 1760s) had incorporated that image into the original church covenant -- so appropriate for the rocky coast of Maine. Then and now it has reminded the congregation of their interconnections with each other, with the past and with the future. Whatever the church might build, they would do so on stones that others had put in place before them, and they would build not only for themselves but for many they would never have the opportunity to meet in their earthly lifetimes.i

Responding with enthusiasm to Sarah’s leadership, together pastor and congregation have spearheaded numerous projects to help the community. Among those many projects are the expanding the food pantry, offering emergency assistance in a collaborative manner through BRCRC, supporting the “Set For Success” project as well as international efforts to help needy children in Guaemala and Syrian refugees at a hospital in Gaziantep, Turkey.

Today, the Congo Church continues powerfully impact: giving hope to troubled persons, offering a welcoming and inclusive spiritual space, inspiring members to engage in fresh ways of extending God’s love and justice in the community and to the world and providing a vital youth program. At the center of its life is the weekly worship service where the Rev. Foulger’s extraordinary and engaging sermons challenge and inspire the congregation along with the superb music of the choirs under the direction of the Minister of Music Genie O’Connell, buoying the congregation in numbers and spirit. .

2016, the church’s 250th anniversary, is concluding on a very high note.