Outpost Notes from a Rural Pastor’s Wife

I leave our house every morning just after sunrise to walk a loop, down our street, across the river and back home. I pass a few people out walking, more, if I get a later start than usual. The child in me wonders if they can tell that I’m a pastor’s wife. When I was a kid, it seemed that everyone knew that my mother was directly tied to the church. I never took into consideration that she had made contact in one way or another with these people. I assumed that the skirt gave it away. But I don’t typically wear skirts, and there are people in this town that know who I am, and those who don’t. In my mind, the role of the minister’s wife was completely defined by my mother. It was inescapable. Everything flowed out of her position: the rhythm of the day, the readiness to work, the cheerful attitude; all fruits of a life laid down in submission to Christ and His church. 

I’ve heard stories from locals who have lived all of their lives up here at the top of Maine, about their ancestors coming down from Canada, wearing a jar, containing the same sourdough untold generations had fed, around their necks; a surety of the home they would be building in a new land. They were replanting their families in the midst of adversity. When we came up here, we joined family that was already here. We pursued a calling the details of which we didn’t completely have. The jars of the historic church around our necks were only half full with poorly fed starter. 

Our church life up here began in fits and starts, attending first at the church of my childhood, then at another, then finally at the one that my husband Mike would eventually be called to pastor. He had candidated at several churches before traveling further north than Bangor than most people would care to admit. During that time I imagined that my life would look much like what you would imagine: a small New England church, VBS, Sunday School, Ladies’ Bible Study, hopefully some women’s retreats. At all the churches where those things were standard, I had a nagging doubt that I wouldn’t measure up. I had defined church in such a way as to limit the environments with which this organism could thrive.

Within the first month of our being in ministry, half of the congregation left. That sounds really dramatic until I tell you that there were approximately ten people, and the ones that left were one family that had moved away. Over the course of two years our church has changed it’s name, constitution, and denomination; big strides for a little church. There are currently three members, Mike and myself included, and one other regular attendee. There are no ladies groups, or children’s groups, or children other than our own. Aroostook County is staunchly Roman Catholic and we are Protestant. 

We never intended to plant a church, let alone re-plant a church. We knew that some changes would be inevitable, but, surely, only a few little tweaks would be needed to get rid of the any lingering vestiges of legalism. But as time went on, and the Lord worked in our hearts, we began to look around and identify what was dominating the church atmosphere in Maine, especially in Aroostook County. Individualism. Through all the years of considering independent churches to be, not just the norm, but the standard by which all other denominational churches were failing, the problem of individualism had not been considered. Honestly, it was normal; this idea that we all lead our own lives, attend our own churches, and although not forsaking the assembling of one another, answer to no one. Along with the individualistic approach to Christianity on of the distinctive features of Christianity here seemed to be the idea that confession and repentance are found in two places: at the event of conversion, or back at the RCC. 

In rejecting individualism and embracing confession, we did not simply become the new kids on the block, but we became the weird ones (also, we homeschool: double weird). We have stepped outside of the comfort zone of being able to show up (or not), on The Lord’s Day morning, chat, find a seat, take in the experience of church, and head home. I confess that there are times where I have to repent of wanting those very things. It would be so easy to yield into curating a culture within which I don’t have to confess my anxiety openly in front of other people . . . one where I could go with other women to a retreat instead of what is constantly perceived as an advance. 

Up here in the North Maine Woods, we all have these sentiments from time to time. It would be nice to live in southern Maine where the winters are fairly mild, where we could actually grow a garden. It would be nice if the grocery store got a shipment more frequently than once a week. These are desires that made some pioneers leave and head back east. So it goes with church. In a way, we have found ourselves to be pioneers in a place where things were already “working”. Why stray from the norm? Up here we have the largest population I have ever seen of people who claim Christ and yet never commit to a church. They visit from place to place, or not at all. Many live further into the woods than we and have been content to “attend church” online for years. Others show up at our church from time to time, but never for consecutive Sundays. It is hard not to get your hopes up when there are more voices singing than your family’s alone. But all of these hardships that tempt us to despair are changing us in ways we cannot see. 

Every Sunday morning we move some of our furniture, place some chairs in the living room, arrange the same materials on the knee wall of the mudroom: books on bitterness, and Bible-reading plans, none of which have been touched. We carry in the pulpit, fill the fronts of the hymnals with the call to worship and The Apostle’s Creed, prepare the Lord’s Supper, and wait. Sometimes we will have more than our usual two; if one of the travelers is making the circuit, other times, we will have one. We confess our sins, worship God, hear the Gospel preached, and celebrate the feast. The sourdough is active, and we bake bread.

I don’t know if God will bring more members into our congregation, or if at some point our doors will close and He will lead us somewhere else, but “He is our God, and we are the people of His pasture, and the sheep of His hand” (Psalm 95:7).