When Armen and Vicky Hanjian moved to Oak Bluffs from New Jersey in 1994, a working retirement was their only choice.

“We weren’t sure we could do it financially, because we knew things were a little more expensive on the Vineyard,” Armen recalled. The couple had left two full-time incomes to subsist on his pension alone. They were too young to receive Social Security, and Vicky hadn’t worked long enough to draw a pension.

So the married Methodist pastors rolled up their sleeves.

“We both did housecleaning,” Armen said.

“That was quite lucrative,” Vicky added with a smile. It was a job that sustained them for close to a decade.

The couple also began volunteering for Island nonprofits, beginning a life of local service that has earned them this year’s Spirit of the Vineyard Award from Vineyard Village at Home. The Hanjians will accept their award during a 7:30 a.m. presentation at the Martha’s Vineyard Hebrew Center on Dec. 12.

Last Sunday, after Vicky led the service at the Chilmark Community Church and before Armen’s 80th birthday party, the couple sat down with the Gazette to talk about how it all began.

“Not long after we moved here, the clergy association was looking to start some kind of outreach to single adults as a largely underserved population,” Vicky said. “I took on that job,” hosting weekly discussions for divorced, widowed and otherwise single Islanders. “I tried to tend to people’s spirituality as well as their social needs.”

Over the years, Vicky has also served as a bereavement counselor at Hospice of Martha’s Vineyard, led marriage enrichment weekends with her husband, and volunteered for Windemere Nursing & Rehabilitation Center at the Martha’s Vineyard Hospital, where she leads a weekly group for elderly residents.

Armen has also been busy volunteering. “Soon after we arrived, I became involved with others in setting up Habitat for Humanity,” he said.

He served two terms as the local group’s vice-president before leaving to coordinate the Island Food Pantry. “I was doing both for a while, but the Food Pantry emerged to be a bigger and bigger consumer of time.”

Armen celebrates his 20th anniversary with the Food Pantry in early 2017, when he steps down and hands the reins to his current assistant Margaret Hannaman. He also volunteers for Windemere, driving residents to appointments and events several times a month.

The couple also share a half-time ministerial position at Chilmark Community Church, alternating sermons from Sunday to Sunday. The 80th birthday party for Armen drew Islanders from all over to the church hall on Sunday afternoon, including church members and family — the Hanjians’ three sons and two grandchildren live year-round on the Vineyard.

Members of the Hebrew Center along with the rabbi, Caryn Broitman, also attended the party.

“We attend services there on Fridays and Saturdays,” Vicky said.

“Methodists do that — good Methodists,” Armen interjected, as Vicky continued. “I have to expend a lot of spiritual energy here, when it comes to writing sermons, and I need to be fed. And so that’s where I go to get fed.”

The Hanjians met when they were both very young. Vicky was just 16 when she fell in love with the charismatic young student pastor at her church. She soon abandoned her nursing program to marry him at 19.

“You couldn’t be a nursing student if you were married,” she said. A decade or so into their marriage, Vicky returned to school and earned an associate degree, working for years as a nurse before deciding she needed a higher education to advance her career. The college she chose was Upsala in East Orange, N.J., and the first course she happened to take was about the Old Testament.

“I loved it,” she recalled. “I felt I had found my home. And within a few months I realized that I wasn’t going to be taking courses to further my nursing career.”

Vicky decided she would be a minister, like her husband. Indeed, after finishing at Upsala she went on to seminary at Armen’s alma mater, Drew Theological School in Madison, N.J.

With his wife in school for years and their children still young, Armen had to step it up at home.

“We always functioned as a team,” Vicky said. She turns to her husband. “You’ll remember this, I think. There is a line in the scriptures that John the Baptist says of himself, relative to Jesus, ‘he must increase and I must decrease.’ Armen said that to me, that he was willing to take the supportive role so I could get through my education and do what I needed to do.”

“I’d forgotten that,” Armen said.

“I remembered it, because that was really very empowering to me that he was willing to not have to be the big guy, and to be supportive — doing dishes, cleaning up, getting meals on the table when I was late with classes and stuff,” Vicky said.

After her ordination in 1990, she too joined the Methodist itinerant ministry, serving churches in the same New Jersey towns as her husband — and never knowing when their jobs would change.

“You’re only appointed for a year at a time,” Armen explained.

“You never know when the bishop is going to call and say you’re moving to another church,” Vicky added. “It’s always a possibility.”

The couple moved to the Island full-time in 1994, into the log cabin they had built from a kit on land purchased in the mid-1960s from the town of Oak Bluffs.

“We bought the property sight unseen,” Armen recalled. “The town was selling property that taxes hadn’t been paid on.”

Their half-acre lot cost $300, which was more than the family had to their name.

“We had to borrow from our life insurance,” Vicky said.

“It’s still the best investment we ever made,” Armen added.

With help from their family, they put up the log cabin in 1977. “It was almost like a barn raising, literally,” Vicky said.

With land, a house and no mortgage, the Hanjians were finally able to build equity that would free them from the rootlessness of itinerant Methodist preaching, which provides parsonages for pastors’ families but no housing in retirement.

“In my whole life, I never had a sense of rooted groundedness in any place,” Vicky said. “It was never our home. There was no urgency to invest, because you never knew how long you were going to be there. You took care of the church. That’s where our commitment was.

“When we finally pulled our energies out of that to move here, that was the first time in my life I began to feel rooted and grounded someplace. I said the day we moved into the cabin, next time I move they’re taking me out feet first.”

“We’re in our community, and it’s incredible,” she added. “We just give thanks for that every day.”