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We believe that the favorable COVID-19 metrics in Harris County support a change to a mask optional worship service at 8:30 am beginning Sunday, March 13, 2022. The church will begin offering hospitality after worship services, beginning outside, and masks will not be required. Church staff, including the choir, will continue to mask. Also, the common chalice will be used again at both Eucharists with options to drink, to intinct, or to abstain.

We are in a continual process of updating our policies as we follow the science and the context of our St. Stephen’s community and Harris County. Flexibility continues to be required as conditions with the virus change. Please know that we may return to masking in the event of unfavorable COVID-19 data within the St. Stephen’s and/or Harris County communities and/or as may be required in specific environments. We thank you, in advance, for your continued flexibility.

We trust in the strength of the St. Stephen’s community, grounded in a culture of care, and hope that this spring will be a joyous celebration of community, learning, and faith.

Everywhere we look this week there is evidence of the challenge of living together. Whether it is the gut-wrenching pictures of Ukrainian dead and refugees, the halls of Congress at the State of the Union speech, PTO meetings discussing mask mandates, or deathbeds where adult children can’t come because of their choice not to be vaccinated, the strains of brokenness seem to abound.

This tension is evident as we seek to honor individuality and individual conscience and simultaneously seek the common good for the vitality of life together. There is an inherent struggle to find the way forward. And yet we know we must. Our children, peace, and the future of our planet demand it.

This week on Ash Wednesday I had the privilege of teaching our youngest students, ages 15 mos – 4 yrs old about dirt. I used the parable of the wheat falling to the earth; the earth being our ashes. When it came time I asked each child if they would like ashes to be placed on them to remember their connection to the dirt. The first 4-year-old in line stuck out her index finger for me to impose ashes on it. Those who wanted to participate stuck out their fingers or thumbs and looked at the ashes in amazement. I think my young friend was on to something.

If we look at the ashes we see our own mortality. If I look at your face I see yours. Both are true.
As St. Stephen’s revises our COVID policies, we will seek to strike this balance of honoring persons and community.

–The Reverend Lisa Hunt, Rector

Lent is a season for introspection, change, and renewal. As part of our semester-long examination of the Gift of Place, leaders in the parish will be inviting the congregation of St. Stephen’s to learn the history of our church in its place, Montrose. What are the deed and covenants on our property? How did they work to define our neighborhood? How have they changed over time? What have been the forces of inclusion and exclusion regarding race? What forces made Montrose the safe space for the LGBTQ community?

On Wednesdays in Lent, beginning March 9 at 6:30 PM on Zoom, we will be researching our history with the assistance of archivists, lawyers, planners, other neighborhood leaders who have embarked on this trail before us.

On Sunday mornings at 9:30 AM in the Haven Center and on Zoom, we will be sharing out our findings and gathering questions and stories. The goal is to come to know ourselves and our geography in its historic context so that we can facilitate the development of our place. Lent is a time for healing and reconciliation. The history of Montrose has been shaped by racism and those echoes may persist into our own day. At Lent’s end, our hope is to be able to tell the truth in love and invite our neighbors into conversation.

My maternal grandfather immigrated to the United States from Kiev, Ukraine. Like many people, I have no idea who my kin are in the old country, but as war breaks out as I write this, my heart is sad. I feel a deep loss down to my roots. I wonder if my family has died or has been displaced.

Family trees are a mystery. Sure they are made more plain as folks participate in 23 and Me, along with other genealogical enterprises. There is a sense of immanence and transcendence in these tree mapping exercises—we are the flesh of their flesh and so are immanent, they are also transcendent as they cross time from the past to the now and into the future.

I have been thinking of roots this month as I lead chapel at the Day School where we are leaning into Black history month. Using the Scripture from Jeremiah 17:7-8, “The righteous shall be like a tree planted by the waters, and that spreads out her roots by waters, they shall not be moved,” Grace Sung, our Director of Music, and I have been teaching the children the power of roots. They are belting out the spiritual/freedom song, We shall not be moved. It is a hymn of conviction and resolve.

As we approach Ash Wednesday and the world is on the brink of war, I take comfort in the fact that our roots, and those of all humanity, extend into the heart of God. While there is profound brokenness emerging all around us in many lands, and indeed in our own neighborhoods, our roots are deep. We are like a tree planted by the water; we shall not be moved.

-The Reverend Lisa Hunt, Rector

We had a prayerful and productive Vestry Retreat this past Saturday in the Havens Center. After discussion and discernment, our vestry identified five priorities for this year:

• Buildings
• Church & School Relationship
• Communication
• Invite, Welcome, Connect, Reconnect
• Social Justice Action

Specific and measurable goals were identified for each area. Our leaders look forward to continuing to update the parish on progress. Additionally, new officers were selected:

• Susan Raine, Sr. Warden
• Owen Tredennick, Jr. Warden
• Judith Ambler, Treasurer
• Julia Wolf, Clerk

-The Reverend Hannah Pommersheim, Curate

Way back before the pandemic, St. Stephen’s began its work on racial reconciliation by engaging in reading and discussing the 1619 Project which was published by the New York Times. This provocative series allowed our parish to broaden and deepen our awareness of America’ history and our own.

When the pandemic hit, this work continued in two small groups which met on Zoom to read and discuss the impact of racism and race on our identities and faith. Moving from Ibrahim Kendi to Howard Thurman to Willie Jennings to the Episcopal Church’s Sacred Ground curriculum, about a baker’s dozen of us have been shaped by this deliberate, personal, and sometimes painful work of internal change.

The rhythm of spiritual transformation is never one-dimensional. Changes in being result in changes to doing. Action also impacts contemplation.

As Lent approaches some of these participants are now ready to act on what they have learned and they are inviting you to join in the process. As St. Stephen’s is exploring mission real estate development through the Gift of Place program with Trinity Wall Street, our parish will be diving into our place, the gift of Montrose. Throughout Lent on Wednesday evenings on Zoom, we will be engaged in researching the history of deed restrictions and covenants in Montrose to determine what elements of racial discrimination remain in them. On Sunday mornings at 9:30 a.m. in the Havens Center and on Zoom, we will be listening to your stories and suggestions and sharing what we are discovering and how it may inform our actions.

The goal is to learn our history–both of discrimination and inclusion–and to engage our neighbors in conversation and to reveal where we are today. Depending on what we find, our parish may then help lead the process of rectification, as many other communities throughout the country are doing now.

Faith is always about the Spirit’s movement of creating us and the consequences emerging in action in the world. Lent is a time to be intentionally cultivating that process.

The Reverend Lisa Hunt, Rector

I grew up in a household where the adults never said they were sorry for anything they said or did. In later years the country singer, Marty Stuart, gave me language for my familial culture when he said, ” Nobody can hold a grudge like a hillbilly.”
One of the byproducts of this dynamic was a lack of opportunity to learn from failure. There was little faith that something good would come out of the recognition of error or hurt and an absence of the joy of reconciliation. Transformation entails risking acknowledging the old way isn’t working.

If hillbillies can hold a grudge, Texans clutch exceptionalism. It is very difficult for us in the Lone Star state to remember failure—our electric grid works just fine, doesn’t it? I was so pleased this week when Bishop Doyle wrote in a letter of support for our grant application to Trinity Wall Street that he wanted the Diocese of Texas to learn about mission real estate development from them because two previous attempts here in Texas had failed. He wants us at St. Stephen’s to assist in this work as learning.

This Sunday we will hear about Peter and his friends failing to catch fish after having been out all night. He listens to Jesus and tries a new way. The result is a catch so abundant that their boats begin to sink. Admitting failure, learning from it, and trying alternatives is part of the spiritual life. It keeps us humble and supple.

As we move forward in community, I hope together we will foster a spirit of truth-telling which can acknowledge failure, learns, and is transformed.
–The Reverend Lisa Hunt, Rector

This Sunday at noon on Zoom, our parish will exercise one the most fundamental practices in the Episcopal Church, the Annual Parish Meeting at which the Vestry is elected and held accountable.  As the baptized ministers in this congregation, our governance structure requires that elected leaders and clergy give an accounting to you of our mission, vision and finances.  You elect others to represent you on the Vestry, the Board of the parish, which sets policy, creates budgets, calls rectors, assumes debt, and builds buildings on behalf of the whole.

I am excited that the Vestry will be reporting out to you about the health of our parish.  You will be hearing about the findings of our Congregational Assessment, the fruits of the Project Oversight Committee’s work with our architects and the next steps ahead.  You will have an initial opportunity to respond to what you hear.  The finances for 2021 will be presented, along with the budget of 2022.  You will also elect four new Vestry members and a delegate to Diocesan Council.  Many, many churches keep one or all of these functions under wraps so that they are only known to a select few.  In the Episcopal Church, you are partners with Christ in caring for his Body, the Church.

If you are unable to attend by Zoom and need a paper ballot, please contact the church office at 713-528-6664.  Whitney Corson, our substitute administrator, will advise you of the process.  You must be a confirmed communicant in good standing (giving of time and treasure and in attendance at least 3 times this past year in person or online) and at least 16 years of age to vote.

I look forward to seeing you Sunday.

Join us on Sunday, Jan. 30, 5-7 pm at Local Foods – Upper Kirby, 2555 Kirby Dr. Houston, TX 77019 for dinner and fellowship. Food and beverages available for purchase. Seating is available outdoors. RSVP to families@ststephenshouston.org so we know to look for you, and in the case of inclement weather, we can send an update.