Rev. Janet Newton led her first service Sunday as the new minister at the the Unitarian Universalist Church with a sermon entitled Reclaiming What We Will Become: Community, Notre Dame and the Lessons of Fire.

When he leads a service, Reverend Bill Clark, 61, wears a starched white hat and a rainbow-colored stole. He walks up and down the aisle during the hymns with broad strides, his chin tilted upwards, his voice easily filling the cozy wooden church.

“Whatever you are going through in this life, my friends, you are not going through alone,” he told his new congregants, the members of the Unitarian Universalist Society in Vineyard Haven, at a recent Sunday morning service.