LIVERMORE FALLS – The Rev. John L. Hall was installed recently as the full-time pastor of First Baptist and Moose Hill Free Will Baptist Churches in a service held at First Baptist Church.

L. Gary Knight, chairman of the Pastoral Search Committee, presented Hall and his family to the congregation and Clerks Paul Washburn and Donnalee Johnsen welcomed all.

Knight commented on how great it was to have a light on in the parsonage after so many months without a resident minister.

A Maine native, Hall was raised in Wayne and earned a bachelor’s degree in accounting from Thomas College in Waterville in 1984. After several years in the secular field, he accepted a call to ministry and enrolled at Bangor Theological Seminary in the fall of 1998, graduating with a master’s of divinity in May 2003.

He served as student pastor at the Litchfield Plains Baptist Church from July of 1999 and was ordained there in July, just prior to accepting the call to the local churches.

He and his wife, Heidi, have two daughters, Rachel, who lives with her husband, Alden Palmer, in Orono while attending the University of Maine; and Becky, who is a student at Livermore Falls High School.

The new pastor was welcomed to the West Area Association by Moderator Harold Souther; to the Tri-Town Ministerial Association by the Rev. Charles Hargenrader of the Church of the Nazarene; to the American Baptist Churches of Maine by the Rev. Ed Merrill, minister of mission support; and to the town of Livermore Falls by Selectwoman Joyce Drake.

The charge to the pastor was given by Pastor Meredith Dalessandro, Hebron, and the charge to the church and prayer of installation by the Rev. Eva Thompson, Buckfield.

Doug Mosher was organist and the First Baptist Choir sang “You Give and Give Again” and “Worthy of the Calling.”