ZELIENOPLE — It’s a different sort of church revival.

Calvin Presbyterian Church, 415 E. Grandview Ave., is doing its best to resuscitate Butler’s Trinity Presbyterian Church, 107 Staley Ave.

Two of Calvin’s clergy, the Rev. Graham Standish, the senior pastor, and the Rev. Connie Frierson, associate pastor of program, have been filling Trinity’s pulpit and working with its session (church council) to ensure Trinity’s survival.

Standish, who’s been pastor at Calvin for 19 years, said, “One of the reasons I’m doing this is I’ve been growing churches. The congregation was 200 when I started here.”

Calvin currently has a 520-member congregation, he said.

Standish said problems started at Trinity Presbyterian in 2009.

“They hired a new pastor about five years ago, and they were looking for a young pastor to help them grow,” Standish said.

“His theology was not one normally embraced by the typical Presbyterian,” Standish said.

Trinity’s membership dropped from 200 to 35 in 2½ years, Standish said.

As for the pastor, Standish said, “He’s renounced the Presbyterian Church (USA), renounced the denomination and his ordination.”

Standish said the Beaver-Butler Presbytery in 2013 asked the Zelienople church to step in.

“They wanted a committee to oversee the church,” Standish said. “Tom McMeekin, chairman of the committee on ministry and Executive Presbyter, the Rev. Alan Adam, they approached me and said ‘This church is struggling.’”

Standish said at first the presbytery’s plan was to convert Trinity into a satellite campus of Calvin.

McMeekin said, “I had observed what Dutilh Methodist Church, the local Methodist church in Cranberry, had done in adopting Mars Methodist Church as a satellite. It seemed like a really good idea to me.”

But, Standish said, “We just weren’t comfortable. We are a growing church, but we are not an evangelistic church. We don’t care for growth for growth’s sake.”

“The possibility of a Calvin satellite sounded more and more like empire building,” said Frierson. “We’re more concerned with the health of the church at Trinity than how big Calvin could grow.”

McMeekin said, “They met with the Trinity session and came up with this revitalization plan.”

Frierson and Standish said they will be working toward that goal with Frierson and Standish serving as pastors at Trinity and the presbytery granting the Butler church $60,000 to renovate its sanctuary and pay the salary of a new pastor.

Since June 1, Standish and Frierson have been assuming pastoral duties at Trinity on Sundays with Standish heading Trinity’s session.

Mary Ann Miller of Butler, a church elder and lifelong member of Trinity said, “They officially started June 1 of this year, but I think it was probably two months before that they starting working with the session.”

On Aug. 10, the Rev. Tammy Wiens was named Trinity’s renewal pastor.

“I guess the idea is Connie and Graham are donating their time. I’m the on-site pastor at Trinity,” Wiens said. “My role is to help imagine God’s new future and what are some of the new ways to be a church.”

Wiens, who lives in Carnegie, had worked in the national headquarters of Presbyterian Church (USA) as an associate in the office of theology, worship and education.

She said she knew Standish from working on a prayer team and when she learned of his efforts at Trinity, she said, “I thought that sounds really exciting. I might be interested in that.”

“What she will be doing is some preaching,” Miller said. “She is also starting some programs, Bible study and adult Sunday school.”

“It’s too soon to say anything definite,” Wiens said. “We want to really attract people that aren’t going to church right now. What Graham calls ‘spiritual but not religious.’ We really want to offer something that’s going to help them in their work of faith.”

The effort seems to be paying off, said Standish.

“We’re up to an average of 35 to 40 in attendance. We hit 50 a couple of Sundays, which we are pretty happy about,” he said. “We need to start a new member class.

The nearly 60-year-old Trinity church is planning a grand reopening at its 11 a.m. Sunday service.

“I’ve made a two-year commitment,” said Wiens. “I think eventually Trinity Church would have a large enough congregation to have its own pastor and Graham and Connie would fade out. Whether I would be part of that, we’ll wait and see.”