Pastor uses skills to build church in Maine
DUNDALK ? When he saw the announcement in the e-connection, the Baltimore-Washington Conference?s electronic newsletter, it didn?t take the Rev. Ted Marsh, pastor of Dundalk UMC, long to respond to an appeal from the Northeastern Jurisdiction for volunteers to go to Maine to help build a church?s fellowship hall and community food bank. He?d been on mission projects before.
He was one of nearly 40 people from many denominations who came together in July for an old-fashioned barn-raising at Pleasant Street UMC in Waterville. Volunteers from the community and as far away as Maryland and Pennsylvania, and even inmates from the Hallowell Pre-Release Center, mobilized to build an 87-by-47-foot facility, according to the Kennebec Journal.
'In the world today, if we all profess to be Christians, then we all belong to the same church,' a pastor from New Hampshire said of the ecumenical project.
A Roman Catholic Church across the street fed the volunteers, with food provided by 12 churches in central Maine. St. John?s Home, a former nuns? convent in Winslow, Maine, housed them.
'I love to do this and I?m meeting new people, enjoying the outdoors, getting to work with my hands a little bit,' said Marsh, a former construction worker. 'I just feel God has led me to use some of the talent I have.'
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