Photo by Jeff Baughan The Rev. Elizabeth Campbell Maleke has pastored the First Presbyterian Church of Williamstown and the Waverly Presbyterian Church for the last six years.

WILLIAMSTOWN — The road to the pulpit for the Rev. Elizabeth Campbell Maleke was anything but a short one. And it’s still anything but a quick trip each Sunday to the church she pastors in Williamstown at First Presbyterian.

From the front porch of her Williams Avenue home you can see the steeple of the church. It looks like a short walk but Campbell Maleke’s Sunday morning begins with a 12-minute drive to Waverly to Waverly Presbyterian and then to First Presbyterian. That is, except in the summer when Waverly Presbyterian moves its services to Bethel Presbyterian.

Campbell Maleke pastors two Presbyterian churches which meet in three different buildings over the course of a year. Got that? It’s also her first pastorship after seminary.

“Yes, it can be confusing,” she said. “Until you understand the story behind it.” The story is Waverly merged with Bethel Presbyterian decades ago to form the Waverly/Bethel congregation.

Campbell Maleke pastors at Waverly Presbyterian September-May. The congregation moves its services to Bethel June-August.

“The Waverly church seems to hold the heat better,” she said, “while the Bethel church stays cooler in the summer. It’s weird but it works.”

For six years, Campbell Maleke has been pulling double duty for the two churches. Her journey to the pulpit? Well, you need a road atlas. “Everything started in upstate New York in a town named Spencer, which is really about the size of Williamstown,” she said. “The journey started there when Rev. Burton Huth of the Spencer Federated Church said he thought I would make a fine pastor some day.

“I got to thinking about it and here I sit in a Presbyterian church in Williamstown,” she said. “That conversation got my soul searching for an answer. I was 14 at the time. I hadn’t really gone to church on a regular basis until the sixth grade and two years later, my pastor and I are talking about a career in the ministry.”

She attended a “Youth Theological Initiative” in Atlanta her junior year “which gave me a peek into what seminary would be like,” she said.

After high school graduation, college led her to Davidson College in Davidson, N.C., which is about 20 minutes north of Charlotte. Davidson is a Presbyterian sponsored school.

“I got more involved with the Presbyterian denomination while I was there. I earned a B.A. in religion while I was there,” she said.

Take the map and go from Atlanta to Toronto where she worked with L’Arche Daybreak. “It’s similar to the Arc here,” she said. “I worked with people who had development disabilities. We worked to help them to live within their capabilities. It was ecumenical in faith and we helped there with their faith.”

From Toronto, the line crosses the country to Watsonville, Calif., “where I was a young adult volunteer and youth pastor for a group which was 80 percent Spanish speaking.” She was there for a year before heading to San Francisco Theological Seminary.

The road from San Francisco to Williamstown had a few conditions. “There were two churches in this Presbytery which applied to have a new pastor and part of the condition of getting a church was we had to be willing to go wherever there was a match.

“First Presbyterian happened to be one of those which applied and in order to be able to pastor Williamstown, the candidate had to take Waverly as well,” she said. “I sent them a sermon and we had a match. Here I am.”

What wasn’t in seminary 101 was Campbell Maleke’s use of dressing like biblical characters and delivering a sermon monologue. Naomi was a character of choice last week but she added “I’ve done guys before because there are more males in The Bible than females,” she said. “But there was a Mister Rogers not too long ago,” she laughed.

“Seminary was a four-year-program where we studied Hebrew and Greek and the interpretation of the Old and New testaments,” she said. “We did the exegesis — which is all about putting the person in the passage. It was learning to interpret scriptures as honestly as we can.

“Every pastor has gifts,” she said. “You have to identify your gifts and use those gifts as a pastor. I think my characters help with the effectiveness of my sermons. It’s not every week. Sometimes you preach. Sometimes you teach. But you want to show all Christ.”