23 May 2010: Sermon (and then) on(to) the mount(ain)

The striking West Wardsboro Baptist Church is steps away from the general store where I get the paper each day and I've always wanted to see the interior, but it's almost always closed. This church and the Methodist Church in Wardsboro and the Congregational Church in South Wardsboro (map) make up the Wardsboro Yoked Parish that shares a pastor (to be installed this afternoon) whose regular employment is as a UPS driver.

Since I'll be away next weekend, after which the congregation moves on to the Congregational Church in South Wardsboro for the summer--that church building is unheated--today was the time to check it out.

It turns out the main floor is the vestry where in times gone by members prepared a turkey dinner three times a year--the first weekend in November (at the start of deer season), in July, and then again in August. $3 for adults, $1.50 for children. The late summer dinner (and maybe the whole operation) was ended one August after the gravy went bad. The sanctuary is on the second floor, and so the service takes place midway through the trees; the lighting fixture can be pulled down from the ceiling for the lamps to be filled with oil. I was told the church, which was moved to this site from a point a little bit further north and across a brook, was built around 1850, twenty years before Wardsboro was incorporated.

After church, a short hike to the overlook from Little Ball Mountainin Jamaica State Park.