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St. Stephen News

Variety is the Spice of Church!

This last month we received six new members to the church, and we did it in every way that the Spirit and Presbyterian polity allow! Each of them is here for his or her own reason, but each is committed, excited, and wonderful.

Lynda moved here with her husband Tom from Canada. Quite a change from Alberta to Fort Worth! She was not a church-goer at all and had never been baptized, but driving around town one day was taken with St. Stephen. That often happens–the architecture itself speaks to people’s souls. She decided to come to church and was overcome by the friendliness and the sense of God’s presence.

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The Dysfunctional Family of God

We are studying the story of Jacob and his family in our weekly Bible Study. It’s a story that reminds us why the Bible is a better book than we give it credit for. Jacob is a scoundrel, a liar, and too clever by half. He ends us fathering the Twelve Tribes of Israel because he’s outsmarted by his father-in-law Laban, who tricks him into marrying the daughter he doesn’t want to marry so that he can marry the one he does want to marry. There’s more sex, family dysfunction, and intrigue in this story than there is in Desperate Housewives. God is, at least to the protagonists, almost an afterthought, a bit player in their family drama. But through it all, God is working God’s purpose out. Through Jacob’s line the blessing that God has promised the world through Abraham’s heirs is perpetuated.

I asked everyone, “How does this story affect the way you look at your own dysfunctional family?”

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Traveling Down Freedom Road – part one

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by Max Courtney

Someone (or several someones) suggested that I write a blog detailing the St. Stephen Freedom Road field trip. Yes, I thought; that needs to be done so that others might share this adventure.

I was privileged to lead a class at St. Stephen during January and February entitled “Freedom Road: The Struggle for Civil Rights in Black America in the 1950s and 1960s.” After teaching many years in diverse venues (university, police academy, church) I can say without equivocation that this was the most fulfilling class I ever taught. Much of the credit for that goes to the participants whose enthusiasm for the subject was an arterial elixir for me. Much of it also goes to having taken the capstone field trip—Beth Fultz’s suggestion.Read More »Traveling Down Freedom Road – part one

Summertime, and the Livin’ is Easy–Not!

Remember when you were a kid, and you looked forward to summer as the time when things slowed down and you got to play and relax and watch TV and sleep late and go to the beach? That early training sticks with me as an adult. I still imagine summer is going to be slow and relaxed.

Of course, the truth was I spent a whole lot of the summer pretty bored, wishing there was something to do.

Beth Fultz and friend demonstrating her "tie-dyed" hands at VBS!

And there’s plenty to do here at SSPC!  Summer is prime time for ministry. Whether it’s celebrations, summer camps, reaching out to the needy struggling through this hot Texas summer, or preparing for the upcoming year, one thing I can say with authority is that summers are NOT slow at St. Stephen.Read More »Summertime, and the Livin’ is Easy–Not!

Presbyterian?

Several years ago a gay male couple came to St. Stephen with their son, seeking to have their son baptized. They shared that they’d had an unfortunate experience at the large Houston church they’d previously attended. Both had been deeply involved at the church for years. Both had taught Sunday school or served on important committees. It was known in the church that they were a couple, but they never felt ostracized until they went to the church’s leadership, the Session, and asked to baptize their son.Read More »Presbyterian?

I Miss Billy Graham

When I became a Christian as a teen in the ’70s, Billy Graham was the guy I looked to. I read Decision Magazine avidly every month. I like to tell people that “I was a teenage Evangelical.”

But when I went to college, I began to fall away from my early evangelical roots. Then, too, I discovered a soulmate and guide in Billy Graham, whose post-Nixon soul-searching led him to question some of the assumptions that had driven his early ministry–assumptions about God’s anointment of leaders, the unblemished blessedness of the American Way, and the necessity of nuclear weapons. He was a harbinger of a new, broader-minded evangelicalism, and you see his spiritual children in the likes of Rob Bell. And, I hope, in me. Graham’s humble, honest search for a broader way to represent Biblical truth in a political setting helped me return to my own evangelical roots.Read More »I Miss Billy Graham