Normally, all eyes are on Rilla Barrett when she delivers her sermon inside the sanctuary at St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church in Oak Harbor.

But Barrett had a pretty good idea that the Sunday worship service Aug. 9 was going to be anything but normal.

“When I was preaching, I could see everyone was looking over my head,” said Barrett, the Priest in Charge at St. Stephen’s, “and I can still see that. People instead of making eye contact with me, they’re looking at the cross, which is fine. It’s perfectly fine with me.”

The cross Barrett was referring to represents a new beginning at St. Stephen’s.

It is part of a new stained glass window created by Oak Harbor artist Larry Marcell that was intended to mark a fresh start for the church on Regatta Drive that has gone through much heartache over the past decade.

The new stained glass is a replacement for the former large wooden cross that had hung above the altar for more than three decades.

But that cross was removed from the St. Stephen’s sanctuary last summer, symbolizing the end of a sad chapter for the church.

St. Stephen’s split into two congregations in 2004 and spent the next decade uncomfortably trying to co-exist with each other on the same grounds.

The split came after the more conservative majority of the St. Stephen’s congregation, like others across the country, broke away from the Episcopal Church over differences in interpretation of the Bible, escalated by the ordination of a gay bishop in New Hampshire in 2003.

When a seven-year legal agreement between the two congregations to share the church properties expired in June 2014, the larger group, now known as Grace by the Sea Anglican Church, moved out and now worships at the former Armed Forces YMCA building on Pioneer Way.

The cross went with the departing congregation, leaving a void on the sanctuary wall near where it once was suspended in the air.

“It was like two families separating,” Barrett said of the congregational split.

Barrett emphasized the importance of focusing on the future rather than dwelling on the past and sees the new cross inside the stained glass art a perfect symbol to move on and start anew.

The small congregation that remained at St. Stephen’s used a processional cross for a while during worship services until an old rustic cross was found in a storage facility and attached to the bare wall. The latter was rescued from a lodge near Spirit Lake before Mount St. Helens blew in 1980.

“It was taken out and it survived all that, so we felt that it was a good match for us,” Barrett said.

But it was a temporary solution. Marcell, a St. Stephen’s worshipper and creator of the bronze mermaid sculpture in downtown Oak Harbor, started thinking about something more permanent.

In a sanctuary already decorated in stained glass throughout, Marcell became moved to design a centerpiece that would be both symbolic and inspirational.

But the idea of a 4.5-foot diameter stained glass window was grander and would be more costly than simply replacing a wooden cross because it would involve punching a hole through a wall, among other efforts.

And there was one other factor to consider.

“I had never done stained glass before,” Marcell said. “That was challenging, learning how to do it.”

He got a book and drew up an elaborate design on his garage wall to scale, using pastels to show the colors.

He invited Barrett, Deacon Dennis Taylor and another church member to come to his house and see what he was envisioning.

“We loved it right from the start,” Barrett said. “Then, he told us the name of it was, ‘In the Beginning,’ and that made more sense to us. He said he’d been thinking about it for quite a while.”

Barrett shared the idea with Gregory Rickel, bishop of the Diocese of Olympia, which oversees congregations in Western Washington.

“He said, ‘You figure out what you want to replace that cross and we’ll make it happen,’” Barrett said.

Once it was determined the cost would be about $30,000, she contacted Rickel again.

“He said, ‘Wow, that’s a lot, but we’ll make it work.’”

A capital campaign was started to fund the stained glass window and construction with Rickel pledging that the diocese would match donations.

The campaign was a success, with the St. Stephen’s congregation of about 30 also contributing significantly, Barrett said.

The new window was installed in early August. A special dedication will take place in February.

“It’s gorgeous,” Taylor said. “It’s almost like it’s alive. It changes as you move across the sanctuary.

“It’s something like an icon. You can look what’s beyond it and disappear into it.”

That’s what Barrett experienced Aug. 9, the first Sunday worship service after its installation.

But she didn’t mind the congregation looking above her at the colorful cross.

“A window like that, a cross, with all of its symbolism and the water and the new beginnings,” she said, “yeah, I could see that they had connected with it.”

A new baptismal font also was built along with a new wooden stand more recently.

Sandy Taylor, a member of the church since 1979, said she is amazed by the new additions and can’t keep her eye off the window.

She said the former cross was beautiful, too, but its replacement couldn’t have been better.

“If you’re here any length of time it changes colors,” she said.

“It’s like a living creature. It’s a wonderful depiction of what we are.”