Sitting at the Edge of Robinson Woods
Cape Elizabeth United Methodist Church has stood at 280 Ocean House Road on the coast of Maine for more than a century and a half, but its most striking feature is what lies behind the building. Robinson Woods - a stand of mature oaks and hickories that a Maine master naturalist calls "very uncommon for Maine" - stretches back from the parking lot through a network of trails and an Outdoor Chapel, and the congregation has spent the last decade treating those woods as a sanctuary of their own.
The congregation was organized in 1859, marked its 150th anniversary with a packed Sunday service in May 2009, and has been at its current Ocean House Road location since the late 1960s, after Bishop Cliff Ives, who first arrived as a Boston University theology student, led the campaign to build the present building. Cape Elizabeth UMC has long been known for two parallel commitments: the welcoming of all who walk through the door (the Administrative Council voted unanimously in May 2019 to become a Reconciling Congregation), and an extensive portfolio of mission work that includes a food pantry for residents in need, a lay-mentor prison re-entry program, an annual Blessing of the Animals, and the donation of nearly four thousand dresses to girls living in poverty around the world.
Sunday Worship at 10 a.m.
Sunday worship begins at 10 a.m. in the sanctuary, which has a high-arched ceiling and a stained glass cross. The same service is broadcast on Zoom; those who wish to join remotely are asked to send a request in advance with their name, phone number, and email to capeelizabethumc@gmail.com or to call 207-799-8396 and leave a message, and a link will be sent back.
The sanctuary also goes on the road. In the warm months the Outdoor Chapel, at the end of the church parking lot, hosts services in the woods. In August 2025, a joint Lighthouse Parish service drew seventy-five members from Cape Elizabeth and the two partner congregations, complete with a Zoom connection in the woods that was viewed by someone in Florida.
Music sits at the heart of the church's identity. Faith York serves as Music Director and leads the choir, the chancel players, and a long roster of jazz musicians who each year turn the Sunday before Ash Wednesday into Jazz Sunday, a Mardi Gras-style celebration first organized in 2009 by Stephen Bither. The jazz tradition draws on a deep bench of regional players: Barry Daniels on clarinet, Peter Dunphy on banjo and vocals, David Ellis on drums, Peter Lord on saxophone and vocals, Tom Wilbur on tuba, and Tyler Rodenberger on organ. After the 2026 service, a buffet in Fellowship Hall was set out that Lay Leader Steve Hill described as the best buffet north of Boston.
When the pastor is not preaching, services are led by laity, retired clergy, and visiting community mission organizations. Communion is served regularly, scripture is read by lay readers, and a Children's Story is part of the morning.
A Pastoral Story Across Generations
Cape Elizabeth UMC has been served by a chain of pastors whose names run through every page of its history. Cliff Ives arrived in 1962 while still a student at Boston University School of Theology and helped move the congregation to its current location; he later served as a bishop in the New England Conference. His wife, Jane Petherbridge Ives, who was remembered in an August 2026 memorial service as an educator, author, mother, and grandmother, was part of the Cape Elizabeth church family for sixty-eight years.
More recent pastors include the Rev. Ruth Morrison, who began the annual Blessing of the Animals in 2005 and who retired in 2017; the Rev. Priscilla Dreyman, who was named a co-pastor in 2019 and who, after she retired in 2022, became the founding inspiration behind the Eco Ministry; the Rev. Kathleen Decker Szakas, who served from July 2021 as a co-part-time pastor and who closed her final service in June 2025 before moving to the Union United Methodist Church in Belgrade Lakes, Maine; and the Rev. Gwyneth Arrison, who arrived in mid-2025 as the first full-time minister of the new Lighthouse Cooperative Parish.
The most recent pastoral transition was announced in May 2026: after ten months of shared ministry across the three Lighthouse churches, Pastor Gwyneth and the Staff-Parish Relations Committee agreed that she would step down as pastor of Cape Elizabeth UMC effective July 1, 2026, while continuing to serve Peoples and Thornton Heights in a reduced appointment. The District Superintendent, the Rev. Arlene Tully, has begun exploring possibilities for new pastoral leadership, including a possible half-time appointment, and in the interim the church is being led by teams of dedicated laity.
For many years the Rev. Priscilla Dreyman has continued to lead retreats and special projects at the church, including serving as one of four CEUMC EarthKeepers commissioned by the United Methodist Committee on Relief in December 2020.
The Lighthouse Cooperative Parish
In 2025 Cape Elizabeth UMC, Peoples United Methodist Church in South Portland, and Thornton Heights United Methodist Church, also in South Portland, formed the Lighthouse Cooperative Parish, three congregations that share one pastor and one administrative assistant. The Rev. Gwyneth Arrison, when she was appointed in July 2025, became the full-time minister of all three, beginning her first Sunday with an 8:30 a.m. service at Peoples, a 9:30 service at Thornton Heights, and the 10 a.m. service at Cape Elizabeth. Cooperative events across the three congregations have included an Ash Wednesday gathering hosted at Cape Elizabeth, a Protestant Stations of the Cross at Thornton Heights, a Maundy Thursday service at Peoples, and a sunrise Easter service at the end of Two Lights Road in Cape Elizabeth.
The Eco Ministry and Robinson Woods
Robinson Woods is the church's signature ministry. Beginning in 2018, the Rev. Priscilla Dreyman had what she described as a "vivid, strong dream" of a comprehensive environmental ministry emerging from the church property, including its frontage on the Cape Elizabeth Land Trust's Cross-Town Trail system. After conversations with then-pastor Casey Collins, members Steve and Judith Hill, Mark Braun, and District Superintendent Jim McPhee, she presented the vision to the Administrative Council in February 2019. The Eco Dream Team became the Eco Team that fall, and in 2020 the ministry received a $5,000 Congregational Development for Tomorrow Grant from the New England Conference to put the plan into motion.
The team commissioned four of its members - Priscilla Dreyman, Steve Hill, and Bob and Linda Webster - as United Methodist EarthKeepers in December 2020, and Linda Webster took on the role of chairperson and produces a monthly Eco Newsletter. The Eco Ministry has led a multi-year program of monthly nature walks in Robinson Woods with Maine master naturalists, ecologists, and biologists (the Rev. Grace Bartlett, Dr. James Paruk, Susan and Tom Hayward, Jack Flanagan, Linda Greer, and Andrea Southworth are among the leaders); hosted Zoom webinars in collaboration with the Maine Audubon Society and the Bangor Theological Center; led Sunday services on themes of recycling, the comfort of trees, and a video reflection titled "Walk in God's World"; sponsored an annual evening of environmental short films and a potluck supper; and adopted a mission statement that ties worship, prayer, public discussions, nature walks, social activism, and partnerships with schools and faith communities to creation care.
For two consecutive Lents the Eco Team prepared a list of forty suggested practices: Meatless Mondays, shorter showers, cloth shopping bags, turning down the heat one degree, observing the speed limit, writing to congressional representatives about climate change, and unplugging electronics. Members were asked to share during Sunday "Eco Moments" which practices they were trying, and in the second year the whole congregation received a copy of Leah Schade's Lenten devotional "For the Beauty of the Earth."
The Eco Ministry has invested heavily in the Outdoor Chapel and the woods behind the church with the help of five Eagle Scout projects: John Hoskin cleared the chapel site in 1994, Matt Braun refurbished it in 2005, Preston Stewart added more improvements in 2016, Jack McKibben led a 2021 project that installed a drainage pipe and fresh wood chips and added two new benches, and Alden Hughes built 163 feet of boardwalk across the wet stretches of the Cross-Town Trail near the Outdoor Chapel in August 2024 and cleared a new path for the Cape Elizabeth Land Trust. Volunteers have also built bird, bat, and pollinator houses and planted native milkweed.
Judy's Pantry
On the second and fourth Tuesdays of each month, from 3 to 4:30 p.m., Judy's Pantry opens at the church for any Cape Elizabeth resident in need of healthy food. The pantry is named for Judy Simonds, a Cape resident since 1971 whose passion was gardening and who passed away in 2010, the same summer the pantry began operating out of the church.
Each distribution serves roughly eighteen to twenty-two Cape families. Fresh produce comes from community gardens at Gull Crest and Maxwell's Farm (both participating in Maine Harvest for Hunger) and from Cape farms including Jordan's Farm on Wells Road, Green Spark Farm on Fowler Road, Alewive's Brook Farm on Old Ocean House Road, Pat Bothel's garden on Ocean House Road, and Imelda's Garden on Spurwink Avenue. Non-perishables come through the Wayside Food Program, food drives, donations collected at the Cape Lions Club's box in the IGA lobby and at the church, and gifts from the South Portland/Cape Elizabeth Rotary and the Lions Club. Pantry volunteers are coordinated through the church office.
Each November the pantry takes on a Thanksgiving drive, organized by Amy Lombardo and Jen Tinsman, with bins of stuffing, cornbread mix, cranberry sauce, gravy, pie fillings, sparkling cider, and other fixings; fresh vegetable bags from Jordan's Farm; loaves of holiday breads baked by church members (seventy-five loaves in the 2024 drive); decorative bags designed by Lisa Stevens and her daughter Rosie; and a gift certificate for a turkey or any other item the family prefers. In 2024 the Thanksgiving distribution reached forty-one families, the fourteenth consecutive year of the drive.
Family Promise
Cape Elizabeth UMC is one of thirteen faith communities in the Greater Portland Family Promise affiliate, a national program that assists homeless families with children. Each host congregation provides an evening meal, a place to sleep, a light breakfast, and a bag lunch for up to fourteen individuals in four families, hosting one week at a time, four times a year. Bedrooms are set up in the back of the Sanctuary, in the Chapel, in the Sunday School room, and, when needed, in the Nursery. The church's Family Promise coordinators connect volunteers when the church hosts.
In addition to hosting families on site, church members participate in a year-round food-packing program. On the last Wednesday of each month, members and volunteers from eleven other faith communities meet at St. Luke's Episcopal Church in Portland to pack bags of food and supplies for Family Promise clients, with food supplied through a Good Shepherd Food Bank grant and through purchases from the African Supermarket, and with diapers provided through a $2,000 Mustard Seed Migration grant obtained by Lay Leader Steve Hill in 2025. Each month's bags include proteins, vegetables, fruits, rice, beans, and flours selected to fit the families served. Once packed, the bags are driven by volunteers to families throughout the Greater Portland area.
My Sister's Keeper
My Sister's Keeper is a prison re-entry ministry founded in 1999 by Cape Elizabeth UMC member Myrna Cook. After years of leading faith-sharing Bible studies with women at the Cumberland County Jail, Cook responded to a presentation by Sheriff Mark Dion by naming one woman's need for household basics on her release; the congregation's response was so strong that the ministry grew into a program that has, since its founding, built collaborative relationships with eighteen faith-based organizations.
The program works on the principle of lay mentorship. Mentors come from all walks of life and are not required to be affiliated with a faith community. Each year the church hosts a luncheon that honors mentors and mentees; in 2008 the women worked together on panels for a quilt that now hangs in the Cape Elizabeth sanctuary as a daily reminder of the MSK mission. In 2013 the church hosted a celebration service, and in 2014 MSK held its 15th-anniversary gathering at St. Maximilian Kolbe Catholic Church in Scarborough. MSK regularly provides furniture, clothing, personal care items, and financial assistance to women newly released from the Cumberland County Jail, coordinating donations through church volunteers and partnering with St. Bartholomew's Catholic Church for clothing collections. Donations are mailed to MSK c/o Cape Elizabeth United Methodist Church at the church's address.
Preble Street Soup Kitchen and UMCOR
When the calendar offers a fifth Saturday in a month, Cape Elizabeth UMC prepares and serves lunch at the Preble Street Soup Kitchen in Portland. Volunteers begin at 10 a.m. chopping and preparing an American chop suey of hamburger, sauce, vegetables, and pasta; others arrive between 11 and 11:30 a.m. to cut bread, set up desserts, and assemble salads; service begins at noon, and cleanup continues for at least a half hour after the 1 p.m. close. The team is coordinated through the church office. The Preble Street Saturday noon meal typically serves 125 to 150 guests.
The United Methodist Men from Cape Elizabeth, Thornton Heights, and Peoples also collect UMCOR cleaning kits in the spring - items such as clothespins, a clothesline, N95 masks, household cleaner, kitchen gloves, trash bags, leather work gloves, scrub brushes, and reusable cleaning cloths - to be deployed by the United Methodist Committee on Relief for natural disasters in Maine.
Dress a Girl Around the World
Since 2016, women of the church and their friends have met on Saturdays during the winter months in the Sunshine Room to sew dresses for the international Dress a Girl Around the World mission. Linda Wakefield started the project in 2016, and Judith Hill, Linda Webster, and Lili Acheson have continued as its guiding force. By 2026 the group had completed 3,740 dresses - 461 in that year alone, surpassing the goal of 405 - and the program has expanded to monthly sewing gatherings on the third Saturday of each month from January through May and again from September through November.
Each year the finished dresses are gathered in front of the altar and blessed by Judith Hill with a prayer that asks God to use the women's hands "as instruments of love, grace, and life," then packed in suitcases and shipped to a regional Dress a Girl ambassador. When the dresses reach their destinations, the suitcases are repurposed as bassinets.
Missions to Honduras
In the springs of 2005 and 2006, Cape Elizabeth UMC sent missionary teams to Talanga, Honduras, where they worked alongside a local church and the surrounding community. Stephen Bither, who led both trips, wrote afterward about working beside a fifteen-year-old Honduran named Armando on concrete and mortar; about walking in the hills above Talanga with fellow volunteer Bill Slack; about bringing cash gifts, pre-natal vitamins, toothbrushes, clothing, Sunday School materials, and a chalice and bread plate that had been painted and fired by church member Marta Carmen; and about the closing communion and foot-washing led by Pastor Ana Ruth, who presented each of the missionaries with a metal basin as a remembrance. The first lady of Honduras met with the missionaries during the 2006 trip.
Animal Blessings on the Feast of St. Francis
Each fall, near the Feast of St. Francis of Assisi, the church holds a Blessing of Animals in the Outdoor Chapel (Fellowship Hall in case of rain). The tradition began in 2005 under the Rev. Ruth Morrison, the year after she arrived, and the first blessing drew thirty dogs and their owners. That first service raised $589 for animals displaced by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas. Each animal is individually blessed, with certificates, an occasional bandana, and always a dog treat at the end. Blessings have featured dogs named Meggie, Cricket, Sonny Boy (born on Christmas Eve), Poquito (rescued from a dump in Belize), and Henry (named for the poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow), and have at times included a rabbit, a cat, and even the ashes of a beloved dog named Bacster. The tradition paused during the pandemic but returned in October 2025.
United Methodist Women
The church's United Methodist Women (now often called United Women in Faith) meet once a month on the second Tuesday at 1 p.m. in Fellowship Hall. All women of the church and their friends are welcome. The group's behind-the-scenes work includes providing food after funeral services, preparing gift baskets for shut-ins at Christmas, sending valentines to people who have difficulty getting out in the winter, the Italian sandwich sale on Super Bowl Sunday, the annual Thanksgiving food drive, and the Easter-morning cookie and bake sale. The women also host and provide hospitality for larger church events, including the Jazz Sunday brunch and parish ice cream socials.
The Reconciling Decision
In May 2019, after a season of listening to comments and questions from members, the Administrative Council voted unanimously for Cape Elizabeth UMC to become a Reconciling Congregation. The decision was made in the context of the global United Methodist Church's enforcement of restrictions on LGBTQ clergy and on same-sex weddings within UMC buildings. Cape Elizabeth UMC is now recognized by the GALIP Foundation (God's Agape Love (put) into practice), an organization "dedicated to bringing the reconciling message of God's love and reconciliation to the gay, lesbian, bi-sexual and transgender community." The church is part of a growing trend of United Methodist congregations in Maine and across the country that have chosen to identify as Reconciling.
The Building, the Woods, and the Belyea Scholarships
The main sanctuary seats the full congregation for worship, with a high-arched ceiling and a stained glass cross. Fellowship Hall hosts coffee hours, the United Methodist Women's monthly meetings, the annual Jazz Sunday buffet, and most of the seasonal church celebrations. The Sunshine Room is the workshop for the Dress a Girl project, and the Outdoor Chapel sits at the end of the church parking lot on a short trail that connects to the Robinson Woods trail system and the Cross-Town Trail. Each spring the Board of Trustees awards Belyea Scholarships to children or grandchildren of church members and to adults pursuing higher education; the scholarship is named for Arline Belyea, who served the church in many capacities.
Visiting Cape Elizabeth UMC
Visitors are welcomed to the 10 a.m. Sunday service in person or on Zoom; requests for the Zoom link may be sent to capeelizabethumc@gmail.com or phoned in to 207-799-8396. The church is located at 280 Ocean House Road, Cape Elizabeth, Maine, 04107, with parking on site. Email is the best way to reach the office, and phone messages are returned as volunteers are available. Donations are accepted online through the church's secure Give+ Online portal.
Anyone wishing to join a ministry may contact the church office to be put in touch with the coordinators of the Eco Ministry, Family Promise, My Sister's Keeper, Judy's Pantry, the Preble Street Soup Kitchen, Dress a Girl, the United Methodist Women, or any of the Sunday-morning worship support roles - greeter, usher, acolyte, scripture reader, communion server, coffee fellowship host, trustee, Sunday School teacher, kitchen helper, or member of the Mission and Care committees. Cape Elizabeth UMC is proud of the relationship between its sanctuary and the woods behind it, of its roots in the 1859 congregation, and of the partners who share its ministry across the Lighthouse Cooperative Parish and the Greater Portland community.