Our Minister

Our minister, the Rev. J. Mark Worth, is a native of Michigan. He graduated from high school in Crystal Falls in Michigan's Upper Peninsula; earned a B.A. from Northern Michigan University in 1970; earned a M.Ed. from American International College, Springfield, Massachusetts, in 1983, and a M.Div. from Meadville-Lombard Theological School in Chicago in 1991.

During the Vietnam War he served for two years in a hospital as a Conscientious Objector, fulfilling his Selective service obligations. He has worked the night shift in a General Electric factory (where he served briefly as an I.U.E. union steward); owned and operated a natural food store in Lenox, Massachusetts; and taught history in a private residential school for teenage girls with emotional and behavioral problems, also in Lenox.

Mark has lived in Maine since 1991. He served both the Ellsworth and Castine UU churches from 1991 to 2006, and in 2006 came to serve the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Castine full time.

In addition to preaching and leading worship three or four Sundays a month, Mark meets with committees, leads adult religious education classes, makes hospital and home visits, performs wedding, memorial, and child dedication ceremonies, and participates in community events. Mark has served on the board of the Washington-Hancock Community Agency, the Union River Healthy Communities Coalation, and the Down East AIDS Network. He currently serves on the Community Advisory Board for WERU Community Radio, and volunteers at the Castine Historical Society. He has been active in causes for equal and fair treatment for lesbians and gays, women's rights, civil rights for African-Americans, justice for Haitian refugees, and peace.

He has been married to Michelle "Mickey" Worth since 1979. They live in Penobscot at the Castine town line.