NORWAY — On Sunday, the Rev. Anne Stanley gave her last sermon at Christ Episcopal Church. After 13 years, the longtime rector is stepping down from the post, even as she’ll remain active in the community.

On Friday, Stanley said “retirement” isn’t the best word. “The word ‘retire’ sounds like I’ll give everything up and go lie on a beach somewhere.”

She said she’ll remain active in her many communiy activities, including the Stephens Memorial Board of Trustees, the Paris Policy and Procedure Committee and the Community Resource Coalition, a group of church leaders and nonprofit heads Stanley helped organize earlier this year.

Stanley said her community work has been somewhat “on the fly,” as she’s had to fit it around running the church. “Now I think I’ll be able to do a better job.”

She said she’ll continue services at nursing homes and volunteering as a chaplain at Stephens Memorial Hospital. Stanley said she does that not as a representative of the Episcopal Church but in a nondenominational way.

She’s still ordained and will always be a priest, she said. But she’ll be stepping back from Christ Episcopal Church while parishioners search for a new rector.

Since announcing her retirement, Stanley has received an outpouring of letters from parishioners bringing back memories from her time there. She said she’s been thinking about all the aspects she’ll miss, including “planning liturgies; worshiping with the Christ Church family week after week, year after year; putting Communion bread into people’s hands; visiting people in their homes.”

Stanley came from a large church in Manchester, N.H., where she was the assistant rector. When she heard about an opening at the Norway church, she and her husband drove to town to look around. It was February 1998, right after the ice storm.

Chunks of ice and broken trees still littered the streets, but the church “was like an oasis,” she recalled. “It was just the beauty of the church inside.”

In the years since, she has built hundreds of memories as the church has grown stronger. She said renewing the covenant with St. Catherine’s Catholic Church was gratifying. The two churches share resources whenever necessary and renew their covenant every few years.

In April 2010, Stanley was chosen to give the invocation at a Barack Obama event in Portland. She said she still doesn’t know how she was picked.

She got a message on her cellphone asking her to speak at the event. Soon after, she received a phone call. “I thought it was a practical joke.”

“People were so excited to be in the presence of their president,” she said. “I’ve never prayed before such an enthusiastic crowd before.”

The Episcopal Church has a mandatory retirement age of 72. Stanley said she decided to get it over with a couple of years early. “I didn’t want to have the big old countdown to 72,” she said.

The past few weeks have been busy, with more baptisms and blessings than usual. Stanley said she’ll miss the congregation. She won’t be able to attend services, as the new clergy will need some time getting established.

It could be a year before a new rector is found, as the process in the Episcopal Church can take a long time. A committee of parishioners will create a church profile and find an interested priest who would be a good match for the church. In the meantime, “supply clergy” from other churches and other retired clergy will fill in at services.

Stanley said whoever the committee chooses will be very fortunate. “Whoever comes to follow me in this church is going to have a good thing.”

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