Worship & Music
Each weekend offers four worship services:
Sunday morning
8:00, 9:20 and 11 a.m.
Saturday evening
5:30 p.m.
(Summer schedule)
Worship
- Upcoming weekend worship & learning details
- Four services each weekend
- Rooted in the Gospel
- Open Spirit contemporary worship
- Important dates
- Sunday welcomes
- Baptism
- Weddings
- Stained glass windows
Music
Stained glass windows
“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 — in the east exposure of the St. Paul Sanctuary — dazzle with light, telling the story of the life of Jesus, from his birth to his death, resurrection, and ascension.
Glass artisans
Originally created for the 1952 sanctuary, the 11 windows were removed, repaired and reinforce, and then reset in the 2007 sanctuary.
The stained glass artisans of Oakbrook-Esser Studios of Oconomowoc, Wisconsin brought new brilliance to the colored glass. Artisans from Austria, Germany, and England 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 were a means of learning and preaching to people who didn’t have the ability to read the stories.
The 1951-vintage St. Paul windows are made of antique European glass, all hand-painted and fired.
Narrative windows
St. Paul members Paul and Joyce Bohnsack have kept a meticulously-organized archival file about the stained glass windows. Paul 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
As Paul and Joyce understand the windows’ intricate symbolism…
The story of the cut-off ear (look for it in the Garden of Gethsemane window) has always been 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. In the Resurrection window, the peacock loses all its tail feathers at once. And the new ones come in, all the more beautiful.
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.”
Paul and Joyce have celebrated “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.
"If the only prayer you said in your whole life was 'thank you,' that would suffice. " ~Meister Eckhart