Father George Mathis—Kingsport, Tennessee
Using Artistic Gifts to Beautify Rural Churches
 

Father George Mathis met with the parishioners of Glenmary’s Immaculate Conception Parish in Pulaski, Tenn. He made sketches and offered design choices and then held a workshop for those interested in creating their stained-glass windows. The end result are the windows pictured above.

Prior to becoming a senior member, Father George Mathis described himself as a “frustrated engineer, sculptor, and artist.” He says he “never had the opportunity to study art seriously and apply that study” during his years of field ministry and administrative duties. There simply wasn’t enough time to spare.

Now, he seems to be making up for all those years. He received senior member status in 1993 and moved to Kingsport, Tenn., where he works as a liturgical consultant and stained-glass window designer and creator.

“I work with pastors who are involved in building and renovation projects,” he said. “I work with those small, rural parishes that can’t afford to hire the big-time consultants.”

Most pastors, he said, admit they have very little aesthetic sense and “they are happy to have the extra help in the use of liturgical space, furnishings, and overall design of a worship space.

“I also help educate congregations about what a worship space can be. I explain to them what liturgical renewal is all about.”

He has studied various art media, both in the United States as well as in Europe and has used his artistic talents throughout his years as a Glenmary priest, adding to the beauty of many churches, some of them Glenmary missions. 

He designed eight stained-glass windows for St. Anthony Church in Fayetteville, Tenn., while he was pastor there . Members of his congregation fabricated the windows under his guidance. That community technique is still part of how he works with parishes today. 

“Having people working on their own projects, like stained-glass windows, gives them a sense of ownership,” he said.

While doing consulting work for Glenmary’s St. Mary Church in Franklin, Ky., he designed 32 windows and spent four days showing parishioners how to create the windows. “Then I left them to it,” he said. Following the completion of the project, he remembers how excited and proud they were.

He did the same at Glenmary’s Immaculate Conception Church in Pulaski, Tenn. He met with a planning committee, made sketches and offered design choices. The committee selected the designs, Father George made full-sized patterns of the windows and held a workshop for those interested. And the creating began.

“Everyone who worked on the windows showed up at Sunday Mass with Band-Aids covering their fingers, St. Mary parishioner JoAnne Beam told the Tennessee Register, the newspaper for the Diocese of Nashville. “They became a badge of honor.”

“My pay for this work is I want to see the parishioners’ satisfaction and pleasure at what they were able to do,” Father George said.

In addition, his services save small, rural parishes an extraordinary amount of money. At St. Mary, studio-created windows would have cost $75-$150 per square foot, Father George said. The parish-created windows cost $10 per square foot.

Stained glass adds to the beauty of a worship space, but the worship space itself should be unique to the congregation, Father George said. 

“There is no stereotypic design,” he said. “The space should reflect who and what that congregation is.”

In preparing to start a project, Father George says he encourages communities to be creative and not look at catalogues to determine what their church will look like. “They need to discern who they are as a congregation and let the architect interpret that so the church becomes uniquely theirs.”

Parish unity is the greatest by-product he sees his work creating. “When you put a group of parishioners together several hours a week over several months creating stained-glass windows or conferring on the design or reconfiguration of a worship space,” he said, “they get to know one another and that brings people closer together.” 

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