Celebrating Our Building

Count it misfortune if you missed Lou’s sermon Sunday. St. Paul’s was celebrating the 80th anniversary of the dedication of the church building in 1930. (Remember that the original building ended at what is now the front of the nave.) Lou began by reading a letter from the bishop. I was sitting in the choir thinking that I didn’t know about a letter from the bishop. The bishop, however, turned out to be Bishop Mann congratulating the congregation on its new church building. The sermon offered other interesting facts about our history and ended with the question of how our descendants will view our stewardship of St. Paul’s.

In celebration of the occasion, we sang several hymns that were sung 80 years ago, “The Church’s one foundation,” “Holy, Holy, Holy,” and “Jesus shall reign.” We did not sing “We love the place, O God,” which is no longer in our hymnal, but Lou read two verses of it to the congregation. (You can listen to the hymn and sing along at Oremus Hymnal.)

The historical material was unearthed by our archivist, Nancy Fink, who also created a nice display of historical material on one of the bulletin boards in the undercroft.

I am pleased that Lou has worked at connecting us to our past as a congregation. It is rather surprising that we never even used to celebrate our patronal feast before Lou came. It was particularly meaningful to contemplate our past on All Saints’ Sunday, when we remember those who have gone before us.