NEW SALEM — The Rev. Edward “Ted” Boren plans to preach his final service at North Congregational Church on Sept. 1 — exactly 54 years to the month that he started there.

The 82-year-old will deliver five more sermons before he retires and each worship service will begin at 10 a.m. on Sundays.

“I don’t think I’m gifted to be a pastor of a large church, and I don’t want the stress and responsibility of that,” Boren said of his path to finding a small congregational. “It’s been very comfortable here in that sense, you know?”

Boren said he has decided to step down as pastor mainly due to his wife’s and daughter’s health issues. He is unsure of his retirement plans, but said the family might remain in Orange or move close to his brother-in-law in North Carolina.

A search committee is working to find his replacement. The church will feature guest speakers in the pulpit until at least October. Boren said he will not divorce himself from the church, though he said it is typically considered unethical for a pastor to attend a house of worship he once presided over.

“I have a personality that’s happy to stay quiet,” he said, adding that interference from a former pastor is frowned upon. He mentioned he will suggest being made pastor emeritus, which is merely an honorary title.

“He loves to study and pore over his work and he does all he can to ... cover the subject completely, and you often see him studying current events,” said John Gray, a member of the North Congregational Church since 1976 and a member of the search committee looking for Boren’s replacement. “And he’s a singer, so every time he can gets a chance to sing, he sings. His wife plays the piano and they’re a good team.”

A Rhode Island native, Boren earned a music degree from Eastern Nazarene College in Quincy in 1964 and was a music teacher in Easton for two years.

“That was not my niche, so I didn’t feel like I wanted to do that the rest of my life,” he recounted.

Boren heard God’s call to attend Dallas Theological Seminary, where he graduated with a theology degree in 1970. He wound up at North Congregational Church because the chair of the search committee that year was familiar with the school.

“So he wrote [to the seminary] and asked if they had anybody from New England and, preferably, that was musical,” he recounted. “It was also nice that, when [I] found out as we got acquainted a little bit, he taught for a few years at Eastern Nazarene College.”

Sunday services in New Salem attracted about 120 to 130 congregants every week until about the early 1990s. That number is now about 40. Boren attributes this to secularism and shifts in culture.

He said his biggest passion is preaching Bible prophecy, or predictions made in the Bible.

“He tries to relate what is going on in the world to what the Bible says and Bible prophecy,” Gray said. “The point is that Jesus is coming back sooner than we may hope or think, and we’d better be ready.”

Gray said the church might select an interim pastor before a permanent one is chosen.

“It’s all in the beginning stages,” he said. “We’ll miss him for sure.”

Reach Domenic Poli at: dpoli@recorder.com or 413-930-4120.