LET YOUR LIGHT SHINE - St. Thomas/Santo Tomás Plymouth
By the Church Buildings for Collaborative Partnerships project (CBCP) of the Episcopal Dioceses of Indianapolis and Northern Indiana - 2026
Cultural dinner with La Voz Unida
If worship, welcome and service were expressed in color, their rich spectrum would shine like the newly restored stained-glass windows at St. Thomas/Santo Tomás Episcopal Church in Plymouth. If comfort and joy were expressed as temperature, they would feel as warm and cozy as the spaces St. Thomas/Santo Tomás provides to the community.
The bilingual congregation (English and Spanish) embraced the lessons of CBCP, focusing on building improvements that welcome a growing number of space use partnerships.
“Sharing our space is one way that we can get to know our neighbors and be a community hub for the neighborhood,” explains St. Thomas’ rector, the Rev. Bernadette Hartsough (“Mother Bernie”).
With a CBCP Phase 1 capital grant, the church replaced worn, stained carpeting in the parish hall with water-resistant and highly durable kinetic carpet. Though the church had space-sharing goals, the new flooring yielded new partnerships that “far exceeded” expectations, according to Mother Bernie:
“We had requests from our neighborhood food pantry to do cooking classes and Christmas shopping fairs, the health department to do health screenings… We found that through sharing our space we were able to learn about the needs of our neighborhood and that there is a desire for concerts and live plays performed by people other than professional actors.”
By the time the CBCP Phase 2 matching capital grant opportunity was announced, St. Thomas/Santo Tomás had identified window improvements as a priority for enhancing beauty and comfort in both worship and gathering spaces of the church.
The stained-glass windows in the historic nave (built in 1901) were installed in the 1940’s and had never been reglazed. The capital grant project preserved them with recaulking, trim painting and cleaning.
The Parish Hall, built as the original church in 1861, is also historically significant, but its windows, not so much. They were last installed in the 1960’s and the windows in the attached kitchen in the 1930’s. The windows were difficult to close, safety hazards, drafty, and terribly inefficient in winter cold and summer heat (there is no central air conditioning in the Parish Hall).
Today, the newly installed windows are letting light shine into the space with more efficiency and safety. The Parish Hall windows have top arches that match the old windows’ historic architecture.
Thanks to the community involvement of St. Thomas/Santo Tomás, word is still spreading about the beautiful and comfortable spaces the church provides. Here are more examples from Mother Bernie:
The Marshall County Health Department uses our kitchen and parish hall biannually to give out vaccines and to provide health information to English and Spanish speakers. Now that the kitchen has better climate control, we plan on getting put on a quarterly schedule for vaccines and health information. St. Thomas/Santo Tomás has bilingual interpreters who explain to Spanish speakers the importance of vaccines.
St. Thomas/Santo Tomás hosts monthly meetings for La Voz Unida, an agency providing resources for Hispanic community as well as cultural awareness and education. In 2025, St. Thomas hosted the fall cultural dinner where food, stories and fellowship were shared.
Marshall Starke Development Center performed a play and a concert in the nave.
Noteworthy School of Music has used the nave twice and our parish hall four times for concerts and classes.
Plymouth High School music department held a concert in the nave to raise money for scholarships for physically and mentally challenged students.
Parishioners and community groups use the parish hall for weddings, funeral visitations and luncheons, birthday parties, quinceañeras and baptisms.
The Non-Food Pantry (NFP) serves all of Marshall County. It is a ministry staffed by volunteers from St. Thomas, other churches, and community volunteers. Our NFP uses the parish hall to register clients, give out clothes and other donated items, and to offer refreshments and fellowship.
The NFP has partnered with United Way to conduct the Point in Time survey in January. Point in Time is a one-day survey given to those with housing insecurity. Again, St. Thomas’ Spanish speakers play a vital role.
St. Thomas/Santo Tomás’ worship and Parish Hall spaces were part of Plymouth’s Historic Church Tour in 2025.
“Our church is no longer an insular place closed to the community,” explains Mother Bernie. “CBCP has shown us the potential of our church grounds. The grants have helped us connect to our neighbors and the wider community. It is truly a shared space.”
May the many diverse examples of space sharing at St. Thomas/Santo Tomás’ Plymouth inspire your faith community to consider new ways to extend mission and ministry to your neighbors.
For more information contact:
Info@cbcpindiana.org