Posted on 09/28/2002 7:12:36 AM PDT by Wrigley
Worship centers ponder best spiritual seating
Saturday, September 28, 2002
By Juanita Westaby The Grand Rapids Press
Aworshipper's mind is supposed to be on God, but every once in awhile, it slips to his or her backside.
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There's the pinched nerve, the lower backache, the legs that just have to cross and uncross so the movement can ease muscles strained from sitting.
Between the yearnings for God and a happy backside, many West Michigan churches are searching for seating that will provide members the best fit for worship.
A growing number of local worship centers are rejecting pews as the seating of choice, opting for moveable chairs or comfy theater-style seats.
Companies such as Irwin Seating Co. in Walker each year sell thousands of seats to congregations such as Kentwood Community Church, which opted for theater seats over chairs when it built its 2,300-seat worship center five years ago.
But not everybody is sold on chairs. Pews have a solid base of fans, too.
In fact, few worshippers lack opinions in the pews-vs.-chairs debate.
"I wouldn't even come to church if they didn't have nice, soft chairs. I couldn't take it," said Violet Start, 74, who loves the comfort of the theater-style seats at Kentwood Community Church.
At St. Andrew's Cathedral, parishioner Dee Bochniak heads straight for softly padded chairs added during a renovation two years ago. The chairs, relegated to the back and sides of the historic church, supplement oak pews that dominate the sanctuary.
"I prefer these chairs," said Bochniak, who is in her 70s. "They're a lot more comfortable if you have a pinched nerve, sore knees, a sore back. You can worship better in comfort than in pain."
Bochniak's husband, Tom, weighs in as a pew defender.
Stadium seats, especially, "cause a separation of people," he said. "In the pew, you sometimes have people squash into you. It makes people more aware of others."
For some, it's about comfort
But comfort and convenience wins out for more and more churches, according to Les Lundberg. His job at Irwin Seating is selling the company's chairs to churches. His title: worship sales manager.
There is a "huge growth opportunity" in putting theater seats in mega-churches nationwide, he says.
"Churches are looking for a non-traditional look," Lundberg said. "The growth is in the non-churched, and making them feel very comfortable in a non-church-like setting."
Irwin sold seats to a full gospel church in Dallas, a nondenominational church in West Lake, Calif., and to Kentwood Community Church.
The company believes it will sell about 50,000 chairs a year, but total market demand is near 200,000 seats a year, Lundberg says.
Protestant congregations make up the lion's share of sales. Many Catholic churches stick with pews because they have kneeling benches.
"We've lost some jobs because of the kneeler issue," Lundberg said. "But that's one of our goals -- to solve the kneeler thing."
Theater seats were an easy sell at Kentwood Community Church, whose contemporary services come on a stage large enough to accommodate a piano, two sets of drums, several guitars, two sets of singers, and a multi-media background that displays songs and Scripture passages.
Pews "really didn't fit the design of the building," church operations director Jerry DeRuiter said. "The theater seats fit much better."
He has no fond remembrance of church pews. "My memory of it was the backs of the pews were awfully hard. You'd bang your head on the back of the pews and it was very loud."
To boost flexibility of the space, the church included a few rows of straight-backed seats near the stage, padded in a fabric that matches the plum-colored theater seats.
It is those chairs where Debbie Knorr likes to worship.
"I like sitting in the front so I feel like I'm in a small church even if I'm in a large church," she said. "I like this (smaller) space, the intimacy of it."
Differing ideas of intimacy is part of what drives the pew-vs.-seats debate.
For others, it's about fellowship
Lundberg says most people, given the choice, happily take their 19 to 26 inches of personal space in an individual chair with arms.
In a pew, studies suggest, the same person might try to take 3 feet of room for personal space, but could end up with only 18 inches. "That's like sitting at a Michigan (football) game," Lundberg said.
But worshippers communing shoulder to shoulder is exactly what the Rev. Tom Bolster likes to see at St. Andrew's Cathedral, where the restored pews are hand-carved with quatrefoils, cathedral window patterns and oak leaves.
"A theater or auditorium is not a model for liturgical space," Bolster said. "We need the life and encouragement of seeing other people's eyes and expressions. We need to see them speak and sing. It's a lonely matter when one can only see the backs of heads.
"Everyone must be capable of seeing each other, touching one another, joining in processions easily," Bolster said.
The pews at St. Andrew's are fine for Emmanuel Amog, who attends with his wife, Ana, and their daughter, Trina.
"We're just used to sitting on the bench together," Amog said. "On the bench, we're three, together."
According to Calvin Institute of Christian Worship Director John Witvliet, pews encourage more interaction with the congregation.
"The tension is between wanting to give people a safe (psychological) space and wanting to encourage interaction with other people," Witvliet said.
"Theater-style seats encourage more of an onlooker, observer situation. They're used in churches where there's less movement by the congregation."
Evolving seats
Church seating has gone through many changes over the centuries, Witvliet said.
Early cathedrals had no seats and congregants stood -- a practice many Eastern rite churches try to preserve today. Early versions of pews began showing up in 15th- and 16th-century churches, the carving becoming more elaborate. Puritan meeting houses in America had benches, and soon, pews were universal in churches across America.
By the 1880s, when large opera houses were being built in this country, Protestant churches marveled at the opulent, padded seats, and decided to adopt the same seats for worship.
"It was a sign of wealth," Witvliet said. "Wealthy churches could afford (opera seats) and poor churches couldn't."
Some churches prefer simple chairs over both theater seats and pews. Chairs provide far more flexibility in using the worship space, members say.
Church of the Servant Christian Reformed Church offers 650 simple, hard chairs amidst the cinder-block-walled sanctuary.
Simplicity rules at this church
Intimacy, simplicity and flexibility are what the worship space is all about, the Rev. Jack Roeda said. The half-circle of chairs around the altar encourages congregants to look at others, especially when they gather for communion.
As parishioners approached the altar for communion, the smooth, flat floor meant a young man in a wheelchair, families and an elderly couple all had equal access. When two more people needed to be included in the last round for communion, the congregation moved in to give them more room.
The church's bare-necessity feel is "very liturgical," Roeda said. "There's a going back and forth between the people and God. It's dialogical.
"I wouldn't want to say they couldn't do that with theater seats. It's just there's a certain plainness and ordinariness about these. One of the things we strived for was to dignify the ordinary."
Annette Ediger, 34, a mother of two young children, usually sits in the back, where the chairs are plastic, not wooden like in most of the church.
"For those of us who are latecomers and have children, we sit in the back with the just-plastic chairs. That's our punishment," she quipped.
But Ediger says she does not mind the hard duty since she loves the simplicity of her church.
And one thing in the great seat debate has not changed over the years: The back row offers an advantage, especially to young families.
"We like being back in the plastic chairs because we can sneak out when we need to," Ediger said.
© 2002 Grand Rapids Press. Used with permission
I was just in a almost century old church that has old fashioned wooden theater chairs.ochhhhhhhhhhh
I prefer nicely padded chairs myself...it allows some flexibility in the sancturary. I did go to a church that has padded pews which made the 2 hour service a pleasure not a back pain
I have heard of church splits on this topic..personally I do not mind pews .I would bring a stadium seat if they are the non padded type :>)
Would it have the Buffalo Bills logo on it? ;)
Here I thought it was my sterling character, quick wit and sound doctrine..Geeeeeeeeeeee
In these days of high construction costs the chairs make sense at least to me..
But when push comes to shove it is the preaching of the word that draws not the seats:>)
Our Worship Center is 30 years old, very "dated", and very much in need of some critical repairs at this time. Eventually, we will build a new Worship Center and at that time, we will most likely go to the theater-type chairs.
By the way, while we are renovating, we will be worshipping in the gym...using metal fold-out chairs!!
Personally, it doesn't matter to me whether we have pews or chairs. (And that statement means I have come a LONG way!!) I go to worship and hear the word of God preached. Our worship service lasts about and hour and 15 minutes, a lot of which time we are standing to sing. So, we really don't sit for a long time anyway!
We send out a letter from our pastor every week to first-time guests. We include a "First Impressions" card that asks what they liked and didn't like about their first experience at our church. In the years I have worked there and seen the returned cards, I recall only ONE response that said they didn't care for the pews. Mostly the comments are about the preaching and the music. So, maybe pews vs. chairs is not a critical issue?
Diet Coke.
Diet Pepsi...with a twist :>) Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh (coke in a storm:>)
I heard somewhere that if you take all the people in church on an average Sunday morning from all over the world and laid them end to end they would be a lot more comfortable.
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