SHUTESBURY — A church closed for three years before reopening in 2009 has its first seated pastor in more than a decade.
Mark E. Ellis of Gardner, a longtime journalist, is the new pastor for the 30-member Shutesbury Community Church congregation. Services at the church, located on the town common in Shutesbury center, are held Sundays at 9:30 a.m.
“It’s a wonderful congregation,” Ellis said in a phone interview Monday. “The first time my wife and I walked in we felt the love from this little church, and I am just so happy they chose me.”
Ellis, a graduate of Liberty Baptist Theological Seminary in Lynchburg, Virginia, with a Master of Divinity degree in professional ministry, was selected from four candidates following a six-month process that included preaching to the congregation. After a favorable recommendation from the church council, the 30-member congregation affirmed his appointment.
“I am so pleased to have been called to serve the people of this church who have such a rich heritage of faith,” Ellis said. He led his first services in June.
Ellis previously served as worship leader and music director at Peoples Evangelical Congregational Church in Ashburnham and the Montachusett Salvation Army Corps in Fitchburg. He began his work in Christian ministry in the 1990s as a singer-songwriter and founder of the Lighthouse Song and Sign Ministry.
“I want to build the faith of the church and build the congregation,” Ellis said.
The church originally closed at the end of 2005 due to declining members and a deteriorating condition of its 1827 building. But with the help and cooperation of residents, as well as a group of volunteer workers from Second Baptist Church in South Hadley, the sanctuary was restored and its aging steeple was fixed.
But the church has been holding services in the first floor fellowship hall and still needs around $100,000 to install a wheelchair lift to make the second-floor sanctuary accessible. Ellis said some special events, such as a recent funeral, have used the sanctuary, but weekly services need to be accessible for all in the congregation.
A native of Orange and Bernardston and a graduate of Northfield Mount Hermon School in Gill, Ellis briefly interned for the Daily Hampshire Gazette in the 1970s while he was a student at Amherst College and then worked for the Greenfield Recorder and Telegram and Gazette in Worcester as part of his 35-year career.
Ellis’s wife, Anne, has served for many years in children’s ministry and is a volunteer in domestic violence support programs.
Ellis said he hopes to meet the public during the Celebrate Shutesbury festival scheduled for Sept. 15, which will feature an annual tea, a silent action and a bake sale to raise money for the church’s mission work.
Scott Merzbach can be reached at smerzbach@gazettenet.com.
