The Rev. Nancy Duncan holds a frame drum she sometimes uses as a storytelling aid while in her office at Broad Bay Congregational Church in Waldoboro. The fifth minister in the church’s 42-year history, Duncan assumed the pulpit in 2004. (Sherwood Olin photo)
Twenty-one years after she first ascended to the pulpit of the Broad Bay Congregational Church in Waldoboro, the Rev. Nancy Duncan said part of her still marvels that people turn out to hear her sermons.
“Love, justice, mercy; rooted in day
-to-day stuff,” she said, describing her weekly themes. “I’m amazed people who have been here the whole time I have are still interested in my sermons, because you sort of have heard it before.”
A Massachusetts native, Duncan had been living in Maine for almost 20 years before finding to the Waldoboro church. With her husband Larry, she moved to Rockland from the Boston area in 1985. She was familiar with Maine because her parents owned a summer home in Southport for years; the home where Duncan and her husband live today.
She grew up in the Boston suburb of Milton and attended school at the prestigious Milton Academy where her father worked as math teacher.
Her private school upbringing gave her a great education and a skewed vision of reality, Duncan said.
“It was educationally terrific and socially complicated,” she said. “It was really, a warped upbringing. I thought we were poor because we didn’t have a swimming pool.”
Needing to spread her wings after high school, Duncan matriculated to Carleton College in Shoreview, Minn., where she majored in history. Degree in hand, Duncan said she returned to Massachusetts not knowing exactly what she wanted to do but knowing she wanted to help people.
Turning her attention to social work, Duncan began working with the homeless population in Boston and studied theology at the Andover Newton Seminary at Yale Divinity School. Still in her early 20s, she decided not to seek ordination at the time, feeling she was not yet ready to serve a congregation.
“I wasn’t ready, and at that point, I just was having more fun working with homeless women than I was working in a church,” she said.
Moving to Maine, Duncan was “lucky enough,” she said, to be able to find progressively more responsible positions in the mental health field, and eventually earning her therapist’s license. Later, in Maine she provided counseling at MaineHealth Pen Bay in Rockport and worked as a family therapist for almost 15 years in Waldo and Knox counties.
Around the turn of the century, Duncan realized she was ready to make a change in her life. It was a rocky time for her professionally, as she came to the realization she could do everything “right” for her clients and still be left without a solution.
“I got some training where someone said that the job of the therapist was to hold the hope for the family, to just hold hope, and it’s like, ‘Wait a minute. That’s what the church does,'” she said. “There is something about simply taking a breath in the chaos and saying ‘God help me,’ or ‘God help us.'”
Revitalized, Duncan began looking for a church to pastor. She and her husband had already decided they were not willing to relocate so her prospects were limited. Fortunately, however, the position at Broad Bay opened in 2004, and Duncan successfully applied for the job.
Affiliated with the United Church of Christ, a socially liberal, Protestant denomination, Broad Bay was founded in Waldoboro in January 1983. At first, services were held in the private homes of church members. By June 1983, the congregation found a temporary home in Waldoboro’s Meenahga Grange Hall. In October 2002, Broad Bay brought its present home at 941 Main St. in Waldoboro from the First Baptist Church.
In June 2008, Broad Bay became an open and affirming congregation, expressing support for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, nonbinary, and queer individuals.
Duncan said she has come to appreciate Broad Bay welcomes people as they are.
“I think one of the things that I see my role here as being a place,” she said. “I think this is true for all faith communities, for people to gather and bring all of who they are. You don’t have to have your act together or be perfect. Hopefully it’s a place where people can just come together, get to know each other, get to know God, even though we understand the holy in very different ways.”
Today the congregation numbers about 70 people, 30-40 of whom regularly attend the church service at 10 a.m. on Sunday mornings. Although that is the only formal church service, the church facility is used five and six days a week hosting meetings for various community groups, occasional concerts, and other events.
According to Duncan, one example of the church’s flexibility is the development of its Sunday music program. For 18 years, the congregation benefitted from the talents of the late Charlie Beckler, a gifted jazz musician. Following Beckler’s passing in 2007, the Sunday morning music programs recovered slowly, starting with the efforts of violin playing sisters Sophie and Josie Davis.
Currently, the church has a cast of about eight musicians who rotate Sunday services between them. Duncan said the church usually asks the musicians to play at least three hymns from the church’s hymnal. Otherwise the musicians are free to play what they want.
Sometimes the music perfectly fits the occasion and sometimes it doesn’t, but the inconsistency adds to the program’s charm, according to Duncan. The church could have a hired a professional organist to play the church’s 1875 Hook & Hastings pipe organ, but then the soundtrack for each Sunday service would be much more predictable, Duncan said. In this case the musicians better fit for the people and the church.
“It’s kind of crazy, but it works,” Duncan said. “I think that’s something where that happened by accident, because we couldn’t find anybody, and I think we’re way ahead of where we would have been if we had found somebody.”
Twenty-one years into her tenure at Broad Bay, Duncan said her desire to serve and willingness to learn still burn as brightly as ever.
“When I get tired of it, I’ll stop, but I’m still learning and growing,” she said. “I’m not tired yet.”
(Do you have a suggestion for a “Characters of the County” subject? Email info@lcnme.com with the subject line “Characters of the County” with the name and contact information of your nominee.)
