A growing Houlton Baptist church breaks ground on new building

HOULTON, Maine — A year after closing on the purchase of 4 acres, and following months of hands-on work, Shiretown Baptist Church’s move to a much larger Smyrna Street worship space is underway.

“It is our goal to have the building up before the snow flies,” said Pastor Jeremiah Chasse, who was working on site last Thursday afternoon.

The church’s Randall Court location is bursting at the seams with new members and they have pretty much reached their 99-seat sanctuary capacity, he said. The church’s fellowship hall is also too small for group meals, and because they are growing, teens do not have a place for their Sunday school class.

Until the new 6,000-plus-square-foot church building is completed, leaders have made adjustments such as adding more chairs and having the children leave for junior church right away to clear space for the adults.

Contrary to national and state trends, the church has been steadily growing for the past several years, said Chasse, a Houlton native who returned with his wife, Sarah, and five children four years ago to become the church’s pastor.

In Maine, the number of adults identifying as Christian has dropped more than 32 percent in the past two decades, according to a Pew Research Center U.S. Religious Landscape Study published this year.

In 2007, 72 percent of Mainers identified as Christian, while 3 percent identified as other affiliations including Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist and Hindu, and 25 percent were unaffiliated. In the recent Pew study, 51 percent identified as Christian, 9 percent other and 39 percent unaffiliated.

Initially, the Shiretown Baptist Church membership considered building at their current location, but there wasn’t enough room for a larger church and parking, said Chasse, adding that the new church will give the members more nursery space, more Sunday school classrooms, a bigger fellowship hall, more bathrooms and a larger sanctuary.  

Last year’s $79,000 purchase of the 231 Smyrna St. property was the first step in making the new church a reality. Then came all the work, the architectural renderings, the purchase of a metal building kit tailored to their blueprint specifications, and all the clean-up and back-breaking work of tearing down old buildings and clearing the land.  

There was an old home and other structures that had to be torn down, the ground needed leveling, and the well and deep foundation trenches had to be dug before pouring the foundation.

That’s where the members really stepped up, said Chasse. Their contractor, Dan Clark, is a church member, and on scheduled group workdays, about 25 to 30 church members have shown up to help. Together, they have helped with site cleanup and land preparation.

On Thursday, one of the founding members of the church, Tom Milton, was on site helping Chasse. He shared stories of the church’s beginning.

“We started in someone’s house until we bought the property,” Milton said, referring to their Randall Street location. “Our first service was Christmas Day 1994.”

Chasse said that they plan to pour the foundation within the next week, and if they can get the building up, even if not completed inside, they could move over to the new church. That would allow them to sell their existing location, giving them additional money to complete planned interior spaces.

Once completed, the Shiretown Baptist Church will have a sanctuary capacity of 140 to 150, a fellowship hall that can seat most of the congregation for meals and events, five classrooms, and two nurseries.

“And we still have room to grow,” said Chasse, who is already thinking about how to use the additional acreage on site.