home | contact
Worship & Music

Each weekend offers four worship services:

Sunday morning
8:00, 9:20 & 11:45 a.m.
Saturday evening
5:30 p.m.

Learning for all:
9:30-10:15 &
10:45-11:30 a.m.

Worship
Music
Peacock detail in Resurrection window

New life for stained glass

“Worship is a way of seeing the world in the light of God.” — Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel

St. Paul’s stained glass windows

The stained glass windows of St. Paul taking a journey into new life. Joyce Bohnsack calls the process of renewing the windows for placement in the new sanctuary “a rebirth.” A stained glass artisan terms the windows “treasures” that have a “long-lasting place in the congregation’s worship.”

Stretching from sunrise to sunset, from east to west, the windows will be placed inside the new south wall, forming an expanse of translucent art. Once cleaned and restored, the windows will dazzle with light, telling the story of Jesus.

Stained glass specialists

Sometime in May, the stained glass specialists of Oakbrook-Esser Studios will begin the removal process, says Ron Welser. A member of the Building Committee charged with researching the stained glass part of the project, Ron has gotten an education in the ancient traditions of stained glass artistry.

Over the course of a week, specialists recently removed the windows, crated them up, and transported them in specially-designed easels to studios in Oconomowoc, Wisconsin. Now the windows on spread out on workbenches for repair, cleaning, and reinforcement. The removal of decades of grime will bring new brilliance to the colored glass.

European glass artisans

Paul Phelps, the owner of the Wisconsin stained glass studios, has a passion for a craft that is rooted in Europe and stretches back more than 1,000 years. He employs fulltime artisans from Austria, Germany, and England who work with stained glass “in virtually the same way” that it was handled in the 10th century.

Stained glass has been made since medieval times from ordinary sand and wood ash, then transformed by fire to capture light. “Early stained glass windows in churches,” says Paul, “were a means of learning and preaching to people who didn’t have the ability to read the stories.” Paul has a “passion for continuing the legacy of glass. It is humbling to be a small part of church projects and to be a part of the spiritual life of a church family.”

Paul describes the 1951-vintage St. Paul windows as “fairly intricate, made of antique European glass, all hand-painted and fired, which is the most labor-intensive process. They are worth preserving and would be expensive to replicate today.”

The new interior placement will help preserve the windows, explains Paul. “They won’t be exposed to the temperature changes of the seasons.” Once restored and strengthened, the windows will be placed in handsome wood frames.

Narrative windows crafted in 1951

Ron Welser grasps the restoration process, he says, “but I wish I understood the symbolism of the windows better.” He just needs to spend some time in the presence of Joyce and Paul Bohnsack.

Paul Bohnsack digs through meticulously organized archival files. He pulls out original yellowed correspondence between Pastors J.A. and Emerson Miller, and Columbia Stained Glass Co. of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Dated from June 1951 to March 1953, the letters trace the genesis and creation of the windows. The father-son pastoral team set the vision for narrative windows that brought color and symbolism to a visual retelling of Jesus’ life, drawn from the Gospel of Mark. Glass artists began with preliminary watercolor sketches and what the trade calls full-sized “cartoons” of the glass panels.

A 55-year-old invoice documents 10 sanctuary windows, a triple-frame chancel window, and seven small stairway and entry windows (which remain on the north side of the current sanctuary) purchased for $12,000.

An ear, a sword, birds

Recently, Paul and Joyce sat in an empty sanctuary, moving from window detail to window detail. Joyce was parish educator on the St. Paul staff when she first realized the teaching potential of the windows, especially for children. So she took herself to local libraries for research.

The story of the cut-off ear (look for it in the Garden of Gethsemane window) was always a favorite for kids. Joyce thumbs through a Bible. There it is. A flash of a sword and a slave loses an ear. What a story.

Birds carry a portion of the story’s message. In the Baptism window, a mythical phoenix is “burned up and rises out of its own ashes.” A mother pelican plucks her breast, drawing sacrificial blood to feed her young in the Good Friday window. A woman of metaphor, Joyce keeps moving through the sanctuary. She pauses at the Resurrection window: “The peacock loses all its tail feathers at once. And the new ones come in even more beautiful.”

Over the years, Joyce keeps “seeing new things in the windows. They reach out to you and say, ‘This is the story, of the people in the windows and your own life,’” she says.

Journey of faith

In rich reds, blues, and greens, in crosses and stars, palm branches and lilies, Joyce sees her own “faith journey. Like the fish in the Baptism window, I can’t live without water. I see how Christ traveled the path that I travel, that he’s always with me.” In the Palm Sunday window, Joyce spots a mother, a baby, a disabled person, and an old person. “The artist included everyone. It’s about accepting all people — no matter the age or ability — and they’re all praising God.”

With eagerness, Paul and Joyce celebrate “new life” for these translucent pictures that trace the life of Jesus. But the windows, Joyce cautions, are secondary to the message they convey. It’s the dazzling story of God’s light, shining with hope to the world.

"Whatever your heart clings to and confides in, that is really your God." ~Martin Luther