Montville — When Jacob Chace goes to Mass with his Saint Bernard School classmates and the priest offers him communion, he declines it. Like many of his classmates at the Uncasville Roman Catholic private school, Chace isn't Catholic.

Two school years at Saint Bernard have only strengthened Chace's Christian faith, though, at the same time that he's found lifelong friends and developed an interest in theater that he never thought possible while he was being home-schooled and educated at a tiny Christian school in North Stonington.

Chace, 18, knows his ending up at Saint Bernard is an unlikely story.

His mom grew up Catholic in Pawtucket, R.I., but was dissatisfied with the church and became something closer to a Baptist. After he was home-schooled through ninth grade, then spent tenth grade at the tiny North Stonington Christian Academy, Chace was looking for a place to spend his last two years of high school that would surround him with new people and experiences.

He had never heard of Saint Bernard.

"Towards the end of the year, we were realizing we can't do this for two more years. It was too small for me, and I knew I could do more," Chace said in an interview during one of his last days in high school. "Being home-schooled, I always felt I had a lot more to offer to a community than what was happening."

He was accepted to a small Christian school in Rhode Island before it abruptly shut down. The next step was Saint Bernard. It took some convincing but, that fall, Chace enrolled there as a junior.

He said he knew the stereotypes people believe of home-schooled kids — but at Saint Bernard, it never came up.

"There are a lot of stereotypes ... but that's never been really something that people tagged me with," he said. "I don't think anybody really cares here."

He briefly played for the school's soccer team, then friends recommended he join the school's drama program. His middle school role in a Rhode Island theater troupe's play was enough experience to get Chace a part in "The Sound of Music."

"They just kind of threw me in a part, and I had fun," he said. "Even though my part was so tiny ... they trusted that to me."

In the next play Chace auditioned for, he got the part of one of the Three Musketeers.

"It was just very inspiring to see that in one year, I could go from my first month of school being no one — no one even remembered anything about me the first few months — to the end of the year being considered for these roles," he said. "It's been really amazing."

Throughout it all, he said, being around Catholics and nonbelievers alike has strengthened his own faith.

"I was pretty steady as it was," he said. "But now not only do I know what I believe but I also have knowledge of what other people believe."

He now sees commonalities between Catholic teaching and the Christianity he practices with his parents and younger sister and fellow members of their church, a small Evangelical congregation in Richmond, R.I.

"Before I knew anything about it, I was like 'Oh, anything else is crazy,'" he said, "but you can totally tell where stuff is coming from."

Next year Chace will take classes at the Word of Life Bible Institute, which he sees as a "gap year" before he goes to college — he was accepted to Emerson College and Salve Regina University — and majoring in communications or history. After he graduates, he plans to work in the kitchen at the Word of Life summer camp, where his parents work and where he has spent every summer for several years.

Many of Chace's friends at Saint Bernard are not religious, which he says he understands.

"It's not very popular to try and say that these days," he said. "Unless you understand where it all fits, it's so hard to be like, 'Oh yeah, I'm going to spend time talking to something I can't see, or I don't even know it's real. I have a test to study for, I have a game to get ready for.'"

Chace said he doesn't try to push faith on his classmates. Evangelizing on boardwalks with other Christians at Word of Life has taught him that he can't pressure people into believing.

"I'm not like that," he said. "I would encourage people to go find it for themselves. I don't want to be ... telling you, 'this is what you should believe.' It's not really my job at this point in my life to try to hammer that into someone."

"For me, it's communication," he said. "I do pray a lot, and I believe everything happens for a reason. A lot of things that have happened in my life are because I have been faithful to God and done certain things that he's called me to do. And I think I've been an example to others."

m.shanahan@theday.com