During our May 11 Sunday service, it was announced by Lay Leader Steve Hill that Gwyneth Arrison will be the full-time pastor of the newly formed Lighthouse Cooperative Parish, serving our church, the Thornton Heights UMC in South Portland, and Peoples UMC, also in South Portland.

The appointment will tke effect on July 1, after Pastor Kathleen leaves our church to become the full-time minister at the Union UMC in Belgrade Lakes, Maine, and after Peoples minister, Tom Frey, retires. Pastor Gwyneth currently is the part-time minister at Thornton Heights. The appointment was made by Bishop Thomas J. Bickerton and the Cabinet of the New England Conference.

The original announcement was made on Saturday, May 10, at a meeting of the Staff-Parish Relationship Committees from the three Lighthouse churches at Peoples UMC. Though the meeting lasted three hours, much still needs to be decided as to how the cooperative parish will operate. Each church will maintain its own identity and Pastor Gwyneth will work with committees from the three churches to determine details on how she will lead worship and congregational connections at each of the three churches.

There will be another meeting of committees from the three churches on May 24 to begin a plan on how and when Pastor Gwyneth will preach at the churches. At the May 10 meeting, Pastor Gwyneth said she was open to a number of possibilities on what times she would preach at the three churches and how video recordings might be used.

The establishment of the Lighthouse Cooperative Parish came about after all three churches met separately with District Superintendent Arlene Tully over the past month and later voted whether or not to accept the proposal. All three churches voted to accept the proposal.

Pastor Gwyneth has been at Thornton Heights since 2022. She previously served United Methodist churches in Bath, Maine; Bridgton, Maine, and Merrimack, Massachusetts. She also served as the co-pastor with her husband Jamie at Peoples from 2005-2011.

On the Thornton Heights web site, Pastor Gwyneth said she believes “the heart of our church is helping each other grow closer to God in a vital relationship with Jesus Christ through worshipping together, learning together, having fun together, serving the community together, and caring for one another as God’s family”.

Pastor Gwyneth has been married to Jamie for 31 years and they have three children: Micah (age 24), Dena (21) and Alex (18). The family also has two Samoyed dogs. Jamie, Gwyneth, and Alex currently live in Freeport, but eventually will be moving to the parsonage at Peoples.

This is Pastor Gwyneth’s second career — she previously was a mechanical engineer for 10 years in Rockland. She has many wans in which to spend her free time, most of which is sailing or kayaking. When on the ocean, she says she “has a way of connecting with God”.

She also is a photographer and painter (though painting is on the back seat for now, she said) and plays the bassoon with a number of organizations, including the Augusta Symphony Orchestra and the Casco Bay Wind Symphony.

During COVID, she, Jamie, and Alex took a year off and sailed their catamaran down the east coast to Florida and the Bahamas and then back north as far as Nova Scotia. The adventure included swimming with sharks and rays and diving deep into caves.

In our church on May 11, Steve Hill described the May 10 meeting with Pastor Gwyneth as “the spirit was good, upbeat, and hopeful”. Connecting on Zoom from Minnesota, our SPRC chair Mark Braun encouraged all of us “to have an open mind through all of this”.

The transition is just beginning.