New space for love and light at St. Martin’s
Anyone who livestreamed services from St. Martin’s Episcopal Church during the pandemic may be surprised to arrive back on campus to find the dramatic changes that have taken place in the past two years.
St. Martin’s, the largest Episcopal Church in the country with nearly 10,000 members, has grown physically after a $66 million construction project that added more than 65,000 square feet in a new children’s ministry building, music building, Parish Life Center and Pastoral Care Center, all in line with the English Gothic architecture of the main building, one of the city’s most beautiful churches.
The project also dramatically remodeled more than 58,000 square feet in other buildings, including the church’s original structure — what is referred to as the “Old Church” but is now called Christ Chapel — all dedicated by St. Martin’s rector, the Rev. Russell Levenson Jr., and his staff in recent services.
Like other churches and businesses during the pandemic, St. Martin’s adapted with technology, livestreaming services online. In the past year and a half, it welcomed 100 new adult members — a few of whom live elsewhere and now watch services online — confirmed 50 children and baptized 50 more.
Levenson also confirms a trend showing up more broadly in Americans’ faith and spiritual life: People of faith say the COVID-19 pandemic has made their faith stronger.
A Pew study conducted in
April shows that nearly half (46 percent) of people who attend religious services once or twice a month believe their faith is stronger now. Of those who attend services only a few times a year, 26 percent said their faith is stronger — and even some who rarely attend church (11 percent) say their faith is stronger.
Levenson said that fundraising for the construction project began in 2017, paused to help others after Hurricane Harvey and resumed later in 2018. Work got underway in June 2019 and finished this summer.
The new facilities, loaded with screens, technology and flexibility, are getting St. Martin’s ready for its future, he said.
“What’s the elevator speech at St. Martin’s? The short version is that we are here to make and grow disciples for Christ. The deep hungers of the heart are still the deep hungers of the heart, as they have been there for millenia,” Levenson said. “People want to feel loved and feel forgiven. People want to know there’s a God and know there’s something after this life that’s better than this life. This is a unique place to help people see that.”
In short, people go to church to fill their hearts, and Levenson said the new facilities on St. Martin’s campus allow his growing staff to reach a variety of people in many different ways.
Soon they’ll start contemplative, prayer-focused services and Celtic services, and a new addition to the staff — Wayne Watson, a Dove Award-winning Christian singer-songwriter — will launch a new contemporary worship program called Riverway at 11:15 a.m. Aug. 29.
The new Parish Life Center, anchoring the east side of the campus, is a multipurpose worship and education center where that new service and the existing Family Table service for families with children will meet. But the space can be used for other events, including concerts.
The Children’s Life Center provides a new home for the church’s Sunday school, children’s choir and the nursery. A new greenspace — the Crosswalk Garden — in front of that building features artificial turf and a bronze sculpture of Jesus with small children by Colorado artist Rosalind Cook, with a green living wall as a backdrop.
Levenson said this greenspace was placed here intentionally because there used to be a church playground near Sunday school rooms, and it often was too tempting for children to head straight for the playground and skip Sunday school.
More gardens have been placed all over the grounds, including a new cloister-style garden and pocket green spaces with fountains that — when it’s cool enough to sit outside — can help drown out the traffic from cars humming along Sage and Woodway.
In addition to all of the remodeling and new construction, the facilities will be filled with new art, including sculptures, marble reliefs and paintings. Some 14 new lancet-shaped stained-glass windows were made for the Christ Chapel’s dramatic makeover, giving St. Martin’s what may be the most spectacular collection of stained glass in the city.
The stained glass was made by the renowned artists at Associated Crafts Willet Hauser Architectural Glass in Minnesota, a firm whose work is churches and historical buildings in every state in the union as well as in buildings in countries around the world.
Levenson himself chose the Scriptures from which the stained-glass panels would be created. For example, Luke 2:19, Isaiah 1:3 and Matthew 2:2 come alive in the “Nativity” panel; Noah’s Ark and flooding (1 Peter 3:21) are represented in the “Baptism” panel; and Matthew 8:16 and Mark 5:15 inspire the “Healing” panel.
In a sign of the times, Levenson and St. Martin’s have done outreach recently with the predominately Black St. James Episcopal Church in Third Ward, prompted by Levenson’s reaction to George Floyd’s death.
Levenson said he was struck by a more than 100-year-old sermon he read recently, given in 1918 by the Rev. Frances Grimke, a Black Presbyterian minister who was born enslaved.
“It was when the 1918 Spanish flu was coming to an end. You could have taken ‘Spanish flu’ and put in ‘COVID-19.’ He talks about theaters and businesses closing, and everyone was wearing masks,” Levenson said. “On racial justice, he said, ‘If this doesn’t prove we’re all the same, what will?’ White people, Black people, rich people, poor people, Spanish flu touched them all.”
“(Grimke) makes two appeals: If this doesn’t get you right with God, what will? And, doesn’t this remind us all of how much we want to be together?” Levenson continued.
In a lengthy conversation, St. James’ pastor, the Rev. Victor Thomas, told Levenson that the solution to division and strife is just being together. Since then, they’ve had a joint health fair and food fair, and Levenson asked Thomas, a veteran, to speak at St. Martin’s for its annual Veteran’s Day service.
“The race discussions we’ve been having for the last year are right to have, but we’re looking for human solutions to a deeply spiritual problem. Our cultural and society ills, our political divisions, to me, are deeply rooted spiritual problems,” Levenson said. “If we get our hearts right with God, that heals people. I grew up in Birmingham (Ala.), so I know what some of that looks like, and I know what it doesn’t look like.”