Making a Difference in People’s Lives
Meet St. Stephen’s
Throughout our process of discussing who we are at St. Stephen’s, where we hope to go as a congregation, and what qualities we seek in a new rector, many parishioners repeatedly described our congregation as a “family,” with each person playing a unique and valuable role in our church family’s life together. So, in addition to describing the communal aspects of our congregation, we have decided to include several brief personal profiles of various members of St. Stephen’s to illustrate the many ways people of our congregation are living out their faith both within our church and in the world around us.
Lelanda inherited her independent streak from her father. Born in the U.S., he rejected the bride his parents had picked out for him and married a wife of his own choosing in China in November 1947. The young couple arrived in San Francisco by ship in October 1948, and Lelanda was born an American in New York City in March 1949.
“In traditional Chinese culture, the oldest child is supposed to be male,” she says. “My parents tried to protect me from that attitude, but other relatives made it clear I was the wrong gender. I had to learn to stand up for myself.”
“My parents tried to protect me from that attitude, but other relatives made it clear I was the wrong gender. I had to learn to stand up for myself.”
Lelanda’s parents moved to Detroit in the early 1950s for a fresh start away from the large extended family in New York. “It was hard being Asian-American in Detroit during the 1950s,” she recalls. “There weren’t many of us. Mom took us to church because her family in China was Christian. My father actually chose our Missouri Synod Lutheran church because it ‘looked like a church,’ but he never attended. We had to take two streetcars to get there. The people in the congregation — all white people, many of whom had German heritage — were very kind. Some of them occasionally gave us rides home.”
Noting that Lutherans did a “good job” emphasizing Bible studies, Lelanda remembers attending Sunday School, singing in the choir, being confirmed at age 12, and helping out with Sunday School as a teen. “Then the civil rights and women’s movements came along in the 1960s, and I was particularly drawn to the women’s movement,” she says.
“As a young adult, I drifted away from church,” she adds. “Around age 32, my goal was to be a ‘good person,’ so I volunteered in various charities. I believed that you couldn’t help people at arm’s length; you must walk with them through their lives to understand their needs and hopes. When we moved to Amarillo, Texas in December 1994, my daughter attended an Episcopal day school. I started going to the ‘children’s chapel’ to see what they were doing. I ended up attending Episcopal confirmation classes and taking the Education for Ministry (EFM) classes they offered.”
Since moving to Boulder County in 2000, Lelanda has been a mentor for EFM classes at St. Stephen’s and at St. John’s Episcopal in Boulder. She was a lay representative to the Standing Committee for the Diocese of Colorado from 2007 to 2013. She also was elected to Colorado’s General Convention deputation in 2009–2015. In addition, she served on the church’s Executive Council as the Liaison to the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America’s Church Council and as the Chair of the Joint Standing Committee for Advocacy and Networking, which has oversight of issues relating to social justice and public affairs.
“I believe in the importance of the parish church in making a difference in people’s lives,” she notes. “Other churches are more ‘top-down,’ while the Episcopal Church has more of a partnership between clergy and laity. In my view, we cannot identify people in our community as ‘other’ and then target them for outreach. We need to go into the community and ask what people want, and then identify community assets to help them achieve those goals.”
