HARRISONBURG, Va. (AP) — The TV show, “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood,” is the inspiration for worship for a local congregation this summer. Specifically, the song from the show, titled, “A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood.”
“We have seasonal teams that plan all of our worship, fellowship, mission, and study for each different season, on a quarterly basis,” said Pastor Stephanie Sorge, of Trinity Presbyterian Church. “I’ve been thinking for a while about trying to do a Mr. Rogers theme. Mr. Rogers was actually an ordained Presbyterian minister. He was ordained to the ministry with families through media.”
Feeling inspired to combine the summer theme with a newfound personal talent, Sorge imagined creating stained glass that would provide a colorful and inspiring portal to the neighborhood beyond the windows of the church in the stately, white historic building tucked in the Sunset Heights neighborhood, along South High Street.
In June 2022, like many pastors around the country, Sorge was feeling the exhaustion of maintaining a ministry during the COVID-19 pandemic, leading to a close brush with burnout, she said.
“We had done so much to pivot our ongoing response, and trying figuring out how to do things safely and stay connected, how to support people, and to bring a message of hope week to week while acknowledging what was happening in the world,” Sorge said.
Sorge said many pastors left ministry as a result of the pandemic. She took a sabbatical in 2022 to investigate ways that ministers can flourish and avoid burnout to be most present and supportive of a congregation.
“Trinity is a really unique community in many ways,” Sorge said. “There is an understanding of the need to take care of each other and take care of pastors. There is also such genuine care and concern that gives me permission to do the things that I need to do to sustain myself.”
While planning a sabbatical of reading, research and creative exploration, Sorge came across the answer to what was absent in her practice and life, she said: a creative outlet.
“As Christians, we celebrate a God that became embodied with us, so theologically it’s (creativity) representative of the incarnation, and I think beauty and creativity can really enhance worship,” Sorge said.
Exploring potential creative outlets like painting and pottery, nothing quite inspired Sorge like the discovery she was to make during an “Arts, Worship and Recreation” conference she attended at Montreat Conference Center, a Presbyterian center in North Carolina.
“I decided to sign up for the most hands-on things I could find which included a pottery class and a stained glass class,” she said. “That was the first time I had done stained glass, and I really fell in love with it.”
Feeling an ‘enlivening’ of her creativity, Sorge returned from her sabbatical at the beginning of September, 2022, inspired and refreshed, and ready to bring her newfound talent to the congregation, she said.
“I made a book that had pictures of pieces I had made during the summer,” Sorge said. “I work pretty quickly, so I have done quite a few pieces, that was one way of sharing with the congregation, but I had in the back of my head that there could be other ways to incorporate the stained glass work and bring my sabbatical gift into worship.”
Sorge said she started thinking about windows. The idea was, Sorge said, to draw the eye outward, into the neighborhood. It’s fitting Trinity church is tucked near many residential homes.
Exploring the inspiration and legacy of Mr. Rogers through the stained-glass decorations, as well as including in services stories about the man himself, quotes, and even a song that was written to celebrate him, Sorge can find interesting connections between Fred Rogers’ mission and the mission of the church.
While the colorful stained glass hangs in the windows of Trinity Presbyterian, as a testament to the healing power of creativity, and celebrating the neighborhood focus of the summer season of the church, Sorge reveals it is not only this new craft that is bringing her new ways to find joy.
“The process of doing these windows brought a different type of joy to my work,” Sorge said. “Recognizing that this too is work that God has enlivened in me, the Holy Spirit is at work in worship, and worship enlivens all of our gifts.”
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