It was standing room only Sunday afternoon for the installation of the Rev. Cathlin Baker as the 50th minister and first woman to lead the 336-year-old First Congregational Church of West Tisbury. On hand to participate in the celebratory event were 22 clergy and delegates from the Barnstable Association of the United Church of Christ, Island clergy and friends and supporters from Union Theological Seminary in New York city. It was there that Cathlin Baker received her master of divinity degree.

There were also representatives of anti-poverty organizations with which she had been associated off-Island. Reverend Baker came to the West Tisbury church nine months ago from New York city where she had been assistant to the president of Union Theological Seminary as well as a counselor to students preparing to enter the ministry.

As part of Sunday’s installation, which formally makes her the church’s new minister, she was asked what had led her to enter the ministry. Reverend Baker recalled how, during her undergraduate years at Hamilton College in New York state, she had spent time in Madras, India, where she had seen Christianity at work improving the status of untouchables. She had, she said, come back a dedicated Christian. Later, while attending a conference in Cuba she had received her call to the ministry.

“My mother had died a year before and it had been a dark year for me, but there I was one night in my hotel room and I had a vivid call experience. At seminary, I had heard many call stories, and I felt insecure that I hadn’t had one, but all of a sudden that dark night in the hotel, the room seemed to become bright and a voice came and said to me, ‘Anything is possible.’ I interpreted that to mean that ordination was possible. Before that I’d thought maybe I was too young or I hadn’t been churched enough, but that led me to go back to Union, which I had previously attended, and got my master of divinity degree.”

During the course of her ministerial career before she came to the Vineyard, she did work for the homeless in Philadelphia and was a hospice chaplain in Tallahassee, Fla. As assistant minister of a church in Greenwich Village, N.Y., she had devised a project to get churches across the country to support the homeless, farm workers who were organizing and fast-food company employees in need of better wages.

She is married to Bill Eville, a writer with a particular interest in films and long Island ties; one of his ancestors came to the Vineyard as a whaler in the 1700s, while another operated a dry goods store on Circuit avenue in Oak Bluffs that became Clayton Hoyle’s tackle store. The Evilles first moved to the Vineyard in 2002. At that time, Bill’s grandmother, Anne Harding of Oak Bluffs, needed someone to help her with housekeeping chores. The young couple remained for a year until Mrs. Harding’s death, occupying the East Chop home of the Rev. Dr. Paul Chapman, who was among those participating in Sunday’s service. So when the call came urging Cathlin Baker to apply for the position of minister in West Tisbury, both she and her husband were well acquainted with the Vineyard and eager to return.

At Sunday’s installation, members of the Barnstable association, as well as others in attendance, were invited to ask questions of Reverend Baker to assure them of her enthusiasm for the United Church of Christ and for the West Tisbury church.

She passed the question period with flying colors and was welcomed as a new full-fledged member of the Island clergy by Richard R. Knabel, representing the West Tisbury selectmen, the Rev. Judith Campbell, representing the Island Clergy Association, Rabbi Caryn Broitman, representing the Martha’s Vineyard Hebrew Center, and Sharon Gamsby and Barbara Dacey, representing the Bodhi Path Buddhist Center.

Also welcoming her were Liz Theoharis of Union Theological Seminary and Colleen Wessell-McCoy of the Poverty Initiative. The Rev. Dr. Hal Taussig, professor of New Testament at Union Theological Seminary, delivered the sermon at the installation. The service serves as a covenant between the minister and the church, each promising to care for the other.

In her morning children’s sermon, Reverend Baker had asked the children for a definition of an installation and had been told that washing machines and dryers and stoves were the sorts of items usually installed, rather than people.

“But when you get things installed,” Cathlin Baker asked the children, “you plan on keeping them awhile until the model gets outdated, don’t you?”

It appears that it will be a considerable while before a new model of Cathlin Baker is sought.

At the afternoon installation, Gayle Irvin, a member of the congregation who with her husband, Paul Chapman, gave the charge to Reverend Baker, had a special wish for the new minister. Knowing that Reverend Baker is the mother of two (Hardy, age five and Eirene, age one), Ms. Irvin said she hopes the minister will “stay with us long enough to take her grandchildren riding on the Flying Horses.”

Several gifts commemorating the occasion were given both by the minister’s friends and by the members of the church. Liz Theoharis and her mother Nancy of Philadelphia, Pa., presented a handmade blue stole, while church treasurer Ann Nelson, on behalf of the congregation, presented a printer and a computer-generated photo album “on which are captured the joyful memories of this day,” as well as a gift certificate from Heather Gardens, “so you and Bill may choose a tree to plant at the parsonage.

“As you watch the tree grow and flourish and provide shade and shelter for the birds, it is our wish that your ministry with us will grow and flourish and inspire.”