Summer 1979, St. Margaret's Episcopal Church, Belfast, Maine

When my friend, the Rev. R. Truman Fudge declared he was taking a sabbatical in 1979. I saw a solution for everyone. I would live in the rectory in Belfast, take the Sunday liturgies, attend the occasional vestry meeting and have 9 weeks in Maine in the summah. The good folks at Grace Church, Elmira agreed!

It happened that Father Fudge was a book collector and had an enormous theological library. I spent each morning from 9:00 to Noon in study. At the end of the summer I had read almost 30 books, planned sermons for a whole year, ate a lot of clams and lobster.

The interim task was also able to help intepret Father Fudge's radical theology of the Baptized to the wondering leaders of the parish. This year in which the current Book of Common Prayer was published was the rest of the Church's introduction to what some people call "lay ministry". We had been taught that the ministry belongs to Jesus and is shared with the faithful through baptism. St. Margaret's had been a summer chapel with a small year-round congregation for years. Now the parish was becoming a ministry center.