How does space shape or limit what people do when we gather them for church on Sunday?
The received, familiar ordering of church gatherings, the setup many call ‘traditional’ turns a blind eye to tradition and principle both. Naves filled with pews facing the pulpit and altar, sitting where we only see the back of people’s heads (except preacher and celebrant) is, in Christian history, a very recent (17th century) innovation. It served its purpose then but older practice may better serve ours today. After the 1666 Great Fire of London, Christopher Wren rebuilt the city’s churches to serve preacher and congregations’ expectation of ninety minute sermons – people wanted to sit and listen to scholarship and eloquence. The preacher was as much a performer as a rock star or a ballerina. So Wren filled the new naves he was building with bench pews facing the pulpit (and altar). This innovation was a good set-up for listening to an hour and more long discourse.
Wren changed the way churches (and a lot of other communities and groups) gather, but does his useful and sensible innovation support our much briefer sermons or serve the shared aspects of worship that make it truly common prayer?
Reflecting on older practice has led All Saints Company to formulate two principles that we believe should shape the design (or redesign) of better worship spaces, new spaces that reflect much more ancient traditions -
1. Order seating so people can see many other people’s faces, and
2. Open enough space around the Altar Table for the whole congregation to gather round it.
In the seating we propose and have implemented various places (like the choir and collegiate seating that come directly from ancient synagogues), we would argue that the faces of our sisters and brothers at prayer or singing or listening to a sermon are icons for us, a collage of human feeling and experience that all belongs to the Image of God.
And for gathering all together at the Table (cf. Louis Bouyer, Liturgy and Architecture), gathering as the ancient church did reveals how the people’s Great Thanksgiving , the whole people’s prayer, is one.
We’re at work gathering photo tours and experience (witness) from a variety of churches ordered on these two principles. We’ll gather a dozen or so such building tours from congregations that have found these principles are serving them well. We’re developing this project as a service to churches designing new space. Watch The HorseCart for the New Spaces for Worship project.
