BUCKFIELD – After planning and praying for more than two years, congregants of Faith Bible Chapel can rest assured that construction of a larger church is under way.
Turner resident Ben Thone, one of two elders at the nondenominational Faith Bible, said ground was broken two weeks ago and the new building should be completed “in the next year or so.”
“This current building is a hindrance to growth,” Thone said Friday. “Some people come here Sunday morning and we’re just totally packed.
“We’re responding to that with the new space, and we’re confident we will grow.”
Buckfield resident and Faith Bible member and co-founder Roland Warren donated 3 acres of his land for the new church several years ago.
Thone said construction of the building will be done primarily with volunteer labor, and the cost of building materials, which Thone estimates will come to $250,000, will likely be covered entirely by donations.
“People tithe,” Thone said. “People go beyond what they can tithe to make a project like this happen.”
The new Faith Bible, on a lot beside the current church on East Buckfield Road, will be 56 feet by 76 feet, Thone said. He added that that is more than double the size of the old chapel and will accommodate up to 250 people. The current congregation, Thone said, is between 90 and 100 people.
Faith Bible’s Sunday church services, as well as its youth and women’s ministries, currently take place in the basement of a turn-of-the-century Victorian farmhouse in Oxford, donated 12 years ago by Robinson Manufacturing Co., Thone said.
Tracing the history of Faith Bible, Thone said that when it was started 20 years ago by five local families, Sunday worship was held in the home of Paul and Shirley Smith of East Buckfield. There were about 40 congregants at that time, he said. The flock grew, and moved 15 years ago to the North Buckfield Grange Hall.
Faith Bible has been in the farmhouse since 1992, and the space is once again too cramped. Thone noted that congregants are now coming from as far away as West Paris, Greene and Monmouth. For the last three years, he said, Easter Sunday services have been held in the auditorium of Buckfield High School to accommodate the growing flock.
Thone said there are three components to Sunday worship at Faith Bible: singing hymns to contemporary Christian music; fellowship, which consists of “a break for building relationships” between congregants; and the “preaching of God’s word” by Faith Chapel’s second elder, Robin Warren of Buckfield. Robin Warren is Roland’s son.
Asked what made people so enthusiastic about Faith Chapel, and why he felt confident his congregation would continue to expand, Thone said worship there was characterized by an intimacy and warmth not found in some other churches.
“There’s an element of the close-knittedness of the congregation,” he said. “We offer something very real. In a lot of other churches there’s a lot more ritual” that’s not actually found in the text of the Bible.
Thone said another reason he suspects that Faith Bible continues to thrive is the elders’ de-emphasis of church hierarchy and doctrine. Instead, Thone said, the focus is on the individual congregant’s direct experience with God.
“There’s an emphasis here on the spiritual side of things,” he said. “That is what it is all about, a relationship with Jesus Christ, and without that we’re in trouble.”
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