Welcome to the Elm Street Congregational Church

Please contact Vickie Adams with Upcoming Events. Contact also if you have something to put up on the site.

Message From Rev. Smith

It is with great pleasure that I welcome you to the Elm Street Congregational Church’s home page. ESCC has served the Bucksport community for over 200 years and it is a place where the movement of the Holy Spirit fills our ministry. We have a rich history of service, fellowship, and worship and we draw on that history as we look to not only our present but to our future. We have committed ourselves to do God’s work in this church and in this community and through the movement of the Holy Spirit we are growing in our mission and our outreach to our community.

ESCC has long been a “community church,” a body of Christ that identifies needs within our surrounding area and then moves to address them. Most recently members of our congregation realized that we needed to upgrade the space that houses Bucksport Community Concerns, a town wide food pantry that has been feeding the hungry in the Bucksport, Verona Island, Orland and Prospect area for over 32 years. Over the course of two years we worked with the board of BCC and our town government to create a new and more efficient space from which the volunteers could do their work. This renovation project, with the labor done in kind by church members, includes up-graded walls, floors, dropped ceilings and lighting, a fully accessible rest room, office space and wheel chair ramp. It was a project that demonstrated how important it is for community groups to work together to fulfill a need once it is identified.

ESCC has also realized that there is a need in our community for programs for the elderly, especially those who suffer from dementia and who are cared for by family members. With grants from the Brookdale Foundation, Maine Community Foundation, Resourcing the Local Church of the Maine Conference United Church of Christ and private donations we became the sponsoring group for Bucksport Bay Friends, a social model day respite program for people with mild to moderate dementia and their caregivers. With the help of organizations such as Eastern Agency on Aging, The Department of Aging at University of Maine, The RSVP Program, and Bucksport Bay Healthy Communities Coalition as well as local members of the Bucksport area, we will be opening the doors to this program in early to mid June. Though we have a paid director, the staff is made up of trained volunteers who will lovingly provide activities, fellowship, and exercise for those who attend.

Over these last four years the Elm Street Congregational Church has grown in numbers, in faith, in outreach and in vision and we are looking forward to many more years serving this community as Christ’s disciples. Please come and join us on the journey as we continue to preach the Good News through our words and our actions. God bless you all.

Yours in Christ,

Rev. Linda A. Smith, Minister