COLORADO: Colorado Springs parishioners celebrate Palm Sunday homecoming
Episcopal News Service. April 6, 2009 [040609-03]
Pat McCaughan
It was Palm Sunday but, for parishioners worshipping for the first time in two years at Grace and St. Stephen's Episcopal Church, it already felt a lot like resurrection.
An overflow crowd of at least 540 parishioners and supporters filled the landmark Gothic church in downtown Colorado Springs on April 5 to observe the start of Holy Week and to welcome returning Episcopalians. They had been meeting at nearby First Christian Church since the congregation split in 2007 over theological and other issues, according to senior warden Lynn Olney.
"It was great. There were so many people we had to go find folding chairs for them to sit down," Olney said about the Palm Sunday 11.30 a.m. service. Not even frosty 25-degree temperatures or snow flurries could dampen enthusiastic spirits, he said in a telephone interview from his home Sunday evening.
"We ran out of bulletins" but not palm branches, he added. "Needless to say we were very, very pleased."
After a two-year court battle over ownership of the $17 million historic church, an El Paso County district judge ruled March 24 that the property and assets were held in trust for the mission and ministry of the Episcopal Church (TEC) and the Denver-based Diocese of Colorado. The judge ordered a group that left TEC but claimed the property, to vacate the premises by April 1. He later extended the deadline to April 3.
That group, which realigned with the conservative Convocation of Anglican Churches in North America (CANA), a self-described mission of the Anglican Church of Nigeria, has renamed itself St. George's Anglican Church and has begun meeting in a former school.
Representatives of both congregations met on March 30, with Colorado Springs attorney David C. Mize, who was appointed as Special Master by the court to oversee the transition, according to a Grace and St. Stephen's press release.
"We worked together amicably to determine what should stay and what could be removed," said David Watts, representing Grace. "They immediately began moving property that had been cleared (by the Special Master) to their new location north of town."
An exciting time; 'new territory'
The Rev. Martin Pearsall, priest-in-residence at Grace and St. Stephen's since October 2008, said in a telephone interview April 6 that Holy Week is a perfect setting for the congregation's return. "It's a great joy to be back, but it also comes with a great sense of responsibility to do what's right in that place and to build the church and to be the church that Grace once was in downtown Colorado Springs," he said.
That joy is also tempered by the practical realities of offering regular worship, building program and physically returning operations to the property. "There's a huge task before us. It's an exciting time. It's new territory; we've got a lot of very talented people serving on the vestry, and in other capacities, who are ready to take it on," Pearsall said.
Teams of Grace and St. Stephen volunteers spent the weekend readying the sanctuary for Sunday services, and getting reacquainted with the church, which for the past 114 years has been located on North Tejon Street.
Grace and St. Stephen's dates to 1872 and is known as the birthplace of numerous other congregations, community service and cultural organizations, including the Red Cross of the Pikes Peak region; Associated Charities; the Community Chest (later United Fund); the Visiting Nurses Association; and many other ecumenical social ministries. An organist and choirmaster, Dr. Frederick Boothroyd, helped found the city's symphony orchestra and became its first conductor. The church's massive pipe organ, known as the Taylor Memorial Organ, was endowed "as a community instrument" for use in concerts for the community, said Chuck Theobald, a vestry member.
While the organist was getting reacquainted with Grace and St. Stephen's organ on April 3, "there was a moment while he was playing hymns that those of us who were working, just moved into the sanctuary and choir stalls and the first few rows of pews and began to sing," Theobald recalled. "That was when it began to be real that we were back in the building."
Theobald, a baritone in Sunday's 68-voice combined adult and youth choirs, said that while the Palm Sunday liturgy and procession symbolize Christ's triumphal entry into Jerusalem, the spirit permeating the service was one of gratitude, reconciliation and commitment.
"Triumphant is what I expected, but that's not at all what it was," said Theobald, 47, a Fed-Ex software development project manager. "There was a recognition that this was Palm Sunday, and you know what's coming. You know the next part of the service is the crowd, calling out to crucify Christ and that we all have the work of reconciliation to do.
"It wasn't 'hooray we're back in the building.' It was 'this is part of what we need to do to do the work we're called to do,'" he added.
Meeting at the First Christian Church the past two years has forged new possibilities for growth and community connections, he said. "First Christian welcomed us and gave us a place to meet and loaned us equipment. We did joint concerts; they sang at our services and we sang at theirs. We have that connection with their church and the community and we recognize that as fundamentally different than what we were experiencing before. That's fundamentally who we want to be as we move forward."
At Grace's March 29 and final service there, the Rev. David Van Heyningen, First Christian's senior pastor, told worshippers that "both congregations are stronger because of your presence."
At that same service, the Rev. Sally Ziegler, an Episcopal deacon serving at Grace, thanked Van Heyningen and church members for their hospitality. "We will continue to work together with you on the tasks God has set before all of us," she said.
Pearsall said the Palm Sunday liturgy had been planned in advance, as had the guest homilist, the Rev. Canon Lou Blanchard, canon missioner for diocesan outreach and congregational development.
During her sermon, Blanchard talked about "reunification, holding out the olive branch, forgiveness," according to Olney. He said that while, some related legal issues regarding interest income from trusts are yet to be resolved, "the majority of the litigation has ended."
Homecoming and 'full circle'
While Sunday's service was joyful, the return to the sanctuary was also bittersweet, said Edward Brown, also a Grace vestry member. "The Body of Christ was injured in all this," he told a Colorado Springs Gazette reporter.
For Theobald, Sunday's service felt "like completing a circle." On March 26, 2007, the Grace and St. Stephens parishioners found themselves without a worship space four days before Palm Sunday, he recalled. Now, returning for the first time on Palm Sunday, seems to place the congregation "in the same liturgical point at which we left, and gives a sense of completeness," Theobald said.
"The thing I don't know how to express is how much we would welcome people back. How much we would welcome people from the community or who aren't churched who would like to see what an Episcopal mainstream liturgically based, classically music-bound church should really feel like. It's a wonderful place to be."
Olney said the congregation is poised to move forward, into Holy Week's rhythm of Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, Saturday vigil and Easter Day services. And onward, into the future.
"We want to go forward, as a beacon for others in Colorado Springs," he said. "We're proud to be Episcopalian. We're walking a fine line; we're not happy about any hurt feelings anyone might have. We're just happy to be back in our building."