When Lance Satterwhite rented a U-Haul and left his home in Texas for central Maine, he and his family didn’t yet have a place to live.
“We loaded up and headed this way, and along the way we finally got in touch and ironed out a lease,” Satterwhite said. “It was really cool because once we got here, we saw that it was God’s provision.”
The Satterwhites moved to Maine this summer to establish a new Southern Baptist Convention church in Orono, which they’re calling Stillwater Baptist Church. It is one of three Southern Baptist churches — or “church plants,” as new congregations are called — set to begin services in the state this year.
While the Southern Baptist Convention has faced declining membership nationally, its popularity in Maine has surged in recent years, along with other evangelical congregations.
The growth, which at a few thousand people is a relatively small slice of the population, comes despite Maine’s status as one of the least religious states in the country and the convention’s conservative stances on social issues, which cut against Maine’s laws on abortion, same-sex marriage and gender identity.
Some Southern Baptist leaders see the lack of a historical foothold in the region as an opportunity, and cite political tension as contributing to the denomination’s growth across the state.
A growing faith — regionally
Southern Baptist churches in Maine saw their membership triple between 2010 and 2020, according to the Association of Religion Data Archives, from around 2,700 adherents to more than 8,100. Non-denominational evangelical Protestants also saw significant growth, jumping roughly 75 percent.
More recent data from the national convention’s 2023 annual report found that Southern Baptist churches in New England grew by 10 percent between 2018 and 2023. New England is the smallest region for the faith, but the only part of the country where adherence is on the rise.
Nationally, membership has declined to its lowest levels since the late 1970s. Lifeway Research, an evangelical research firm that analyzed the data, found that Maine had the highest state growth in the nation at 19 percent between 2018 and 2023. However, Maine was one of 10 states with fewer than 30 congregations, and Lifeway emphasized caution in analyzing such a small sample.
The growth is especially concentrated in Kennebec County, where the adherence rate was more than seven times the statewide average in 2020. Dan Coleman, lead pastor at Central Church in Augusta, said his congregation has swelled from about 70 people when he took over 14 years ago to more than 1,500 weekly attendees now.
So far this year, the church has baptized 100 people. The church also has a second location in the nearby town of China, and offers remote services in four correctional facilities and six nursing homes.
Each August, the church hosts Serve Central, sending members out into the community to work on volunteer projects nominated by the congregation. The church also hosts a variety of classes throughout the year, plus a free soccer camp for kids.
“We can’t just sit inside of our buildings and enjoy what we have and act as if it’s for us and us alone,” Coleman said, tying this outreach to the church’s growth.
Anna Grant, a member of Central Church, has been attending services in-person for the past two years. She first got involved after going through a divorce, when she applied for a Christmas event put on by the church where parents in need attend a service and then shop for gifts for their children with a personal shopper.
Now she’s at the church every weekend, and volunteers at that same event.
“I was able to shop with families and really build connections and understand where they were at and to pray with them in the hopes that, you know, they find their way out or up or over whatever is going on,” Grant said. “I got to share my testimony with people, and that was a really big step for me to allow myself to be that vulnerable with people I didn’t know.”
Andrew Whitehead, a professor of sociology at Indiana University and co-director of the Association of Religion Data Archives, said the Southern Baptist Convention’s smaller presence in New England makes shifts in attendance more noticeable. He also said people today are often choosing denominations based on political preferences, so the uptick in Maine could be due to people who lean right finding congregations that align with their political beliefs.
“Evangelical, it seems, has become more of a political marker than only a religious one,” Whitehead wrote in an email to The Maine Monitor. “It may be that folks are self-identifying with conservative religious identities as a way to signal their political beliefs.”
Southern Baptists and the Christian right
The Southern Baptist Convention has grabbed national headlines in recent years for its conservative policy positions, as well as for allegations of sexual abuse and controversy over its stance on women pastors. During a national meeting this summer, church delegates voted overwhelmingly to call for a reversal of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Obergefell v. Hodges that legalized same-sex marriage. An internal report found that 64 percent of congregants and 90 percent of “key leaders” in the church are politically conservative.
Southern Baptist leaders have been divided over support for President Donald Trump, who has courted their vote and ushered in a number of policies aimed at conservative Christians. Former vice president Mike Pence spoke at the convention’s annual gathering last year, and Trump spoke virtually at a nearby event promoted to attendees. Last month, the president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, the Southern Baptist Convention’s policy arm, stepped down following criticism for not aligning closely enough with Trump’s agenda.
In Maine, state lawmakers and voters alike have embraced a number of socially progressive positions in the past decade. Maine was one the first states to legalize same-sex marriage through a voter referendum in 2012, despite challenges in previous years from religious groups. Abortion is legal with no waiting period up to the point of fetal viability, and Gov. Janet Mills signed a bill in 2023 that allows abortions after this point if deemed necessary by a doctor. This year, the state legislature voted narrowly and largely along party lines to reject legislation restricting transgender students’ participation in school sports.
Those policies run counter to tenets of the Southern Baptist faith. Mike Nerney, executive director of the Maine Baptist Association, sees the political opposition as an opportunity for the church, not a barrier.
“If the church is being the church, then it stands out even more when you’re in an environment that is supporting a lot of things that the Bible does not support,” Nerney said. “Now the problem is when a church chooses to stand out in a way that’s unloving. Love does not equal affirmation of something. I can love someone I disagree with.”
Isaac Thibodeau is a lifelong Mainer and the lead pastor of Redeemer Fellowship, a church plant in Richmond. The plant was started by New City Church in Bath and will become fully independent in late August. The first public services in the church’s newly leased space are set for October.
Because the Southern Baptist Convention hasn’t had a strong foothold in New England in the past, Thibodeau said church mission leaders have been especially focused on planting churches in the region. He also said the state’s more secular culture means those who show up tend to be quite committed.
“It makes the people who do say they’re Christians, generally they’re going to be more serious than nominal,” Thibodeau said. “I think that lends itself to a healthier church culture.”
Some churches have seen opposition. In Bath, Thibodeau said New City Church has faced review bombing online, opposition at public events and protestors at a regular Sunday service. Coleman said a couple protestors have occasionally shown up at the edge of Central Church events in the community but have not caused issues. Nerney was unaware of any regular protests at other Southern Baptist churches throughout the state.
Planting churches
Pastor Joel Miller felt a number of signs pushing him toward planting a church in Maine before moving to Westbrook last year to start Redeemer Church. The congregation is set to hold its first service in a space rented from the Westbrook American Legion hall in October.
In the year since Miller moved from Delaware to Maine with his family, he has focused on building a community and preparing to start Sunday services. Westbrook didn’t have an established Southern Baptist congregation, so Miller has spent a lot of time in town meeting people and inviting them to Bible studies.
“There’s an openness in Maine right now for people who are like, ‘Man, this isn’t working for me, and I’m willing to try something else,’” Miller said. “And then I think you have churches like Southern Baptist churches that are coming in and they’re proclaiming, ‘Man, Jesus is the way. What you’re looking for, you’re going to find that in Him.’ ”
The push for more churches in New England is intentional. Miller said the denomination has a growing awareness of the region’s increasingly secular population, and it’s seen as an area where new church plants can have the biggest impact.
The Southern Baptist Convention runs the Send Network, which provides logistical and financial support for church planters. The established churches that church plants spin off from also provide varying levels of support. Satterwhite’s original church in Texas raised money for his startup costs and still pays his salary. The Texas church is managing Stillwater’s finances until the church plant can hire a treasurer and set up an independent bank account.
A 2022 survey by the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability found that church plants that survived for more than two years and had fewer than 100 attendees averaged $10,000 in startup costs and $60,000 in first-year costs, Christianity Today reported.
Thibodeau’s congregation in Richmond has attracted a number of young families. He estimates that they have roughly 20 children in the church so far, outnumbering the 13 adults. New City Church, where Redeemer Fellowship is planting from, has roughly 70 children and 60 adults.
“For a while, we were praying for some older people,” Thibodeau joked. “I think it gets back to the seriousness of people, taking the faith seriously and wanting that to affect every aspect of their life. I think Christian parents especially feel that pressure — and it’s a good pressure — to raise their kids well in their faith.”
And for Satterwhite, a former youth pastor, his biggest goal in Orono is to reach college students at the University of Maine.
At his first service on Aug. 3, a dozen people gathered in Webster Park along the shore of the Stillwater River — a church is its people, Satterwhite said, and he didn’t want to wait for a building.
