AUBURN – The Rev. Roger Cousineau stands on the church floor, holds a microphone in his hand and looks out at the pews, where 100 parishioners sit in sweaters, jeans and T-shirts.
For Lewiston-Auburn, it’s an average-sized congregation for a Sunday service. It’s only Saturday, though.
The East Auburn Baptist Church will host three more services this weekend, each drawing more people than this casual meeting. By Sunday at noon, more than 800 will hear this week’s message from Cousineau on man’s closeness to God.
He can afford to smile at the rare empty seats.
“It seems like people are out of the habit,” he said. He knows better, though.
His church congregation has become the biggest in Lewiston-Auburn. And it’s getting bigger.
In the coming year, leaders here hope to break ground on a new church, one that will eventually expand to nearly 70,000 square feet, the size of a big-box retailer.
“The little country church that used to be here has exploded,” said Cousineau, who came to Auburn in 1989.
Donna Helwig, who began attending the next year, merely shakes her head.
“I came and fell in love with the place,” she said. “And it just keeps growing and growing and growing.”
She credits the church’s variety of programs, its devotion to scripture and Cousineau himself.
“The agenda is not to build numbers for the sake of numbers,” the preacher said.
Instead, the agenda is merely to get people to come back. The business of saving souls is rarely done in one prayer or one service, he said.
“It’s like a restaurant,” Cousineau said. “If the food’s good, people come back. Our problem now is trying to figure out where to put the people.”
That hasn’t always been a problem.
When the Michigan native first came to Auburn 16 years ago, the church had only 60 members.
“They hadn’t had a pastor in three years,” he said. “Immediately, the numbers went up.”
There was an adjustment period, though. To the locals, the new preacher was a little strange, he said.
He was 32 when the church hired him. He’d spent the previous couple of years working in a church in West Palm Beach, Fla. And though he’d earned his divinity degree in his early 20s, he’d spent the years between as a prison guard in Vermont. He was also a part-time race car driver.
“I’m a sinner,” Cousineau said. “I was a Ritalin kid. I eat too much and drive too fast.”
He charmed folks by showing them that he’s not so different, even if he is a preacher.
“I’m just like everybody else,” he said. “I’m so far from what I could or should be.”
Being real
He led the church with something he calls the three Rs: real, relevant and reach out.
Being real means the church must have a message that gets beneath the surface, using truth and scripture as a foundation for what it says.
“People do want to be challenged for change, he said. “But they have to know it’s more than a superfluous change.”
Relevance comes from dealing with the issues in people’s lives. Reaching out is about creating a place where everyone feels welcomed.
Services exclude no one, he said.
“People need to know they are not going to be isolated and unloved,” Cousineau said. That includes unmarried couples, both gay and straight.
The preacher can and will point to scripture that opposes alternative lifestyles or lots of other activities, he said, but such teachings are not meant to exclude anyone.
“We can tell the truth is respectful ways,” he said.
It all seems to work.
By the mid-1990s, the church began to look for a new home, an alternative to the longtime church at the corner of Turner and Center streets.
“We’re so landlocked,” Cousineau said. “We’ve sat and counted the cars that drive in, then turn around and drive away because there’s no place to park.”
God with us’
The church bought 105 acres on Park Avenue, about 3 miles away. The first piece of the construction will likely be a gymnasium-style structure for a variety of services. Two more phases are planned, including a complex of offices and meeting rooms. The final phase would include a gathering space for more than 1,000 people.
Until the construction happens, the church will continue to adapt.
Since the spring, the church has been renting the gym at St. Dominic Regional High School for its 11 a.m. Sunday service.
Helwig and other churchgoers manage despite the crowding. Again and again, they talk of the friendly atmosphere.
“This is a church that welcomes everyone, and practices what it preaches,” Helwig said.
In front of the Saturday night congregation, Cousineau continued his message of man’s closeness to God. It seemed to dovetail with the “regular folks” person he has helped create for himself and the thriving congregation.
“We have the same problems as everybody else,” he said. “But we have God with us.”
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