A God-given talent for stained glass

A set of three brilliant, glittering stained glass windows are nestled under a large window facing Washington Avenue in downtown Pulaski. One might think the windows are common, and churches are often famous for their elaborate stained glass windows. But for Trinity Lutheran Church, these windows have a particularly special meaning.

Terri Sternberg, who has been a pastor at the church for 18 years, has a special gift for stained glass. She was able to pursue that gift in June of 2012 when she was given a sabbatical leave with a theme of “Unleashing the Spirt Within” through a grant from the Lilly Foundation.

“Lilly likes for the clergy to take a sabbatical to do something that they really enjoy doing,” said Sternberg. “They want to know what makes your heart sing.”

For Sternberg, stained glass is her passion, so she choose to study stained glass on her leave and then apply what she learned to create three windows for the church.

“Edna Love at the fine art center is where I learned stained glass in the beginning,” Sternberg said. “So it’s from the roots here in Pulaski where I learned. I really enjoy it as a hobby, so I let my sabbatical time be a time of playing with glass, learning how to do stained glass better.”

In the stained glass windows, Sternberg choose to incorporate symbols that had meaning to the church.

“The stained glass project was to show, through symbols, things that project our ministries with our gifts, and that each person would have a piece of glass in the windows that represents them as what their gift is,” Sternberg said. “Everybody in the church is a piece of glass in those composites.”

There are six symbols in the glass windows, two in each window. The top symbols are ‘God’s gifts to us’ according to Sternberg, which includes a cross, shell and grapes, and the bottom symbols are ‘Our gifts to the world’ that includes hands that represent welcoming, a bowl that represents humility, and the bible scroll that represents teaching.

“God’s gives us gifts of Himself, and He also gives us spiritual gifts to share with others to make the world a better place,” Sternberg said of the symbols that represent these gifts.

The windows combine the Tiffany and leading style of stained glass, which is unique to what most churches use when dealing with stained glass. Sternberg also used the original green glass that came from the old crank windows within the new stained glass windows.

“The glass is still largely the glass that was here before,” Sternberg said. “I incorporated something new with something old.”

The project took Sternberg hundreds of hours, and she was still working on the windows after her sabbatical was up in August, but she feels it was time well spent.

“It helped the congregation get a little bit more enlightened in their own leadership,” Sternberg said. “It was a really fruitful time; it helped us take on a new approach to ministry as a group; a fresh approach to allow our members to have more of a leadership role. We have kept the spirt of the sabbatical going.”