St. Stephen’s is pleased to play a role in the cultural life of our city.
It is our way of being good neighbours, contributing citizens, and Christians who celebrate not only God-in-church, but God-in-the-world. Here are some of our favourites events.

Stampede Breakfast

Each year on the first Sunday of the Calgary Stampede (the “Greatest Outdoor Show on Earth”) St. Stephen’s serves up some cowboy culture with a Stampede breakfast and an outdoor worship service featuring The Padre and the Cow Pies.

This great Western cookout and Gospel Music fest is a popular event among church members and community members alike. You don’t have to be a cowboy to come along … but you should at least look like one!

Check out our photo gallery and find out more.

Radio Nights

Located in the midst of Calgary’s thriving performing arts district, St. Stephen’s enjoys a particularly close relationship with local actors and musicians.

Several times a year we re-create the golden age of radio with our Radio Nights series of live music concerts and theatrical readings. Shaw, Priestley, Coward, Shakespeare - they’ve all been here, or will be shortly, much to the delight of music and theatre-lovers of all ages.

A cornerstone of Radio Nights is the annual CBC reading of Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol” by local radio personalities. This performance is recorded by the CBC for broadcast during the Christmas season.

Find out more - click here

Midtown Mosaic

Each year, a month or so before Christmas, St. Stephen’s hosts an art show featuring some of Calgary’s finest artists and artisans. Equal parts art gallery and craft fair, the Mosaic welcomes the wider community into our church where the sanctuary is festooned with easels, the walls are hung with landscapes, and the aisles overflow with jewelry, pottery, and cottage industry crafts. Meanwhile a jazz band plays off to the side in our chapel, charging the air with up-tempo urban chic.

Embraced by art enthusiasts and Christmas shoppers alike, Midtown Mosaic reminds us that, in days gone by, the Church served as the chief patron of the arts. There’s something right - soulful even - about artwork and crafts displayed amidst the stained glass we see on Sundays and the worn wooden pews where we pray.

Check out our photo gallery and find out more

Lectio Divina

The summer months are a time to lighten our load and be refreshed for the year to come. As applied to worship, we take what we call a “Summer Lite” approach to our Sunday services and feature the simple and elegant spiritual practice of lectio divina. This is a meditative way of reading scripture where, with the help of a Tibetan “singing bowl”, we quiet ourselves to hear one reading (not the usual four) read slowly and deliberately while we listen for a particular word or phrase that speaks to us personally.

These summer services are enormously popular and leave some wondering if worship shouldn’t always be this simple.