Rounding out worship

Episcopal Life: Mission Focus

[Episcopal News Service] St. Paul's Episcopal Church "just felt so strange" to Victoria Ellis when she first visited the Pomona, California, parish a few years ago.

Not the liturgy; the seating. Gone were the once-standard forward-facing stationary wooden pews. Instead, rows of linked rust-colored fabric chairs encircled a 39-inch-diameter terra cotta baptismal font, flanked by a portable lectern to the west and a movable altar to the east.

"I'm a lifelong Episcopalian. I was used to seeing the backs of people's heads" rather than facing them during worship, said Ellis, 66, of nearby Alta Loma. But at the end of that service, after nine years of "drifting" among neighboring Episcopal churches, she realized: "This is what we've been looking for." "All my senses are fed here," she said. "It's taken me to a level spiritually where I've never been before. And it's Anglocatholic, which I hadn't been used to."

From California to New York, Episcopal churches large and small, for reasons as varied as stewardship or liturgical and spiritual renewal, are swapping stationary pews for movable seating and rediscovering community.

About one-tenth of U.S. mainline Protestant churches gather in the round, estimated the Rev. Cindy Evans Voorhees, founder of the Huntington Beach, California-based Voorhees Design, a commercial interior design and liturgical consulting firm.

The configuration has ancient roots and enjoyed a rebirth in popularity during the 1960s liturgical reform movement, she said.

"Most of our churches today were built before the liturgical movement gained any speed, so we're behind the curve," Voorhees said. But many "nondenominational churches being built now have adopted in the round almost exclusively."

Changing space, changing hearts

A year ago, St. Bartholomew's Church in White Plains, New York, unbolted the pews and rearranged them hexagonally. Now the congregation enjoys "livelier worship" and some modest growth, said the rector, the Rev. Gawain de Leeuw.

"People are facing each other a bit more; it invites people into far deeper relationship with one another than we did previously," he said.

"Transforming the space was symbolic of us changing from being anxious about the future to believing the resurrection of Christ will strengthen our own hearts," he added.

Built in 1915, the neo-Gothic St. Bartholomew's mission became a parish 13 years later. Its gradual decline in membership sparked a familiar dilemma: more space than people.

"We practically had stadium seating in which the priest was a small figure up there way in the distance and people always sat way in the back," de Leeuw recalled. "It was like a museum ... We realized there's no way we're going to be able to build this church without changing our internal architecture because it's inherently uninviting." Initial anxiety dissipated once parishioners became familiar with worship in the round and also experimented with different styles of worship, he said.

Has it helped church growth? "Well, we confirmed and received seven people last Sunday," de Leeuw said. But pew removal "is not the primary way one should try to grow a church," he added. "What it does is to symbolize or signify that our church cares about how visitors will experience worship. It's a symbol for our church looking outward rather than inward."

Stewardship, hospitality, inclusion After a 1994 fire destroyed more than half its sanctuary, Trinity Memorial Episcopal Church in Philadelphia's center city rebuilt, committing about 95 percent of sanctuary space for community use.

It created the Trinity Center for Urban Life, whose two-fold purpose is to facilitate community use of the space and manage a fund to maintain the church, built in 1874 as a satellite chapel of Philadelphia's Church of the Holy Trinity. With about 60 families, the congregation is celebrating the 25th anniversary this year of a homeless shelter located in the basement.

"We have a large urban property that basically was used one hour a week. Why not use it more and get more out of it?" said Dick Ihrig, parish administrator for 20 years.

He typically helps set up or remove chairs, a grand piano and organ console and even the 18x18-foot-diameter altar and rails to create a "great hall" that accommodates up to 250 for banquets, professional training workshops and performances.

The solitary stationary fixture is the marble baptismal font, said Ihrig, adding that he believes in-the-round sanctuaries are growing in popularity. "We enjoy being able to look at each other's faces. We are on a short list of places to see when people are thinking through their own worship setting. We had a group of Presbyterians visit last week."

The Rev. Paul Abernathy said worship in the round helped forge important communal connections both within and outside the 700-member St. Mark's Episcopal Church, Capitol Hill, where he is rector.

"We literally gather, looking across the dinner table at our sisters and brothers coming for a meal," he said. "It is a reminder that all of us are on this sacred and spiritual journey called life together. This is about inclusion." Located three blocks from the nation's capital, the sanctuary doubles as a stage for theater, music and dance performances and yoga activities because of "our communal theology, that all of human life is sacred," he said. "So we do all of our communal living in nave space, and we seek to hear God's voice in as many, many ways as possible."

At St. Clare of Assisi Church in Ann Arbor, Michigan, which shares worship space with local synagogue Temple Beth Emeth, the round configuration invites hospitality and "really makes it much easier to include children," said the rector, the Rev. James Rhodenhiser. "It's very joyful," he said. "If they [children] are too far away from the center of worship action, they don't feel like they're included." About 40 percent of those participating in the congregation's regular intergenerational service are children.

St. Clare outgrew its previous space, completing in 1993 construction of its third round sanctuary in the church's 56-year history. It can accommodate up to 750 with two overflow lounges.

"It was designed in three modalities: Christian; Jewish; and a neutral setting where there's just cherry mahogany wood paneling" for other activities, Rhodenhiser said. He can be viewed on YouTube here, demonstrating how the cross folds up to make way for the Torah, chairs are rearranged, prayer books and hymnals are stored on book carts and "beautiful needlepoint kneeling cushions which circle the altar are rolled in and out on dollies.

"The theology of hospitality is extremely important to our congregation, which is why we share space with the synagogue," he said. "We like that diversity and think it tells us something about God."

The Rev. Ryan Whitley, assistant rector at St. Mark's Church in Tampa, Florida, said the church's worship space was more three-quarters round than completely round, but the arrangement made him feel "a lot closer to the congregation, and less as this separate body of people, less like the altar party sits way in the back. There's a greater sense of community. It doesn't mean that you don't have it in a traditional space." It's a greater challenge liturgically, he said. When preaching, for example, "if you have a tendency to try to look everywhere and be everywhere, you'll end up looking frenetic and frazzled. I just look around and try to keep my feet planted."

St. Mark's has a sister relationship with the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, which sometimes uses St. Mark's worship space.

In organizing worship space, Whitley commented, "I don't think any way is the one way. ... [A]sk yourself theologically, 'What is it that I'm communicating by organizing it this way?'

If that fits your goals for where you'd like to stretch your congregation, then it's a great use of space. If the answer comes back that 'I'm just doing this because it looks cool,' then it's probably not a good idea."

-- The Rev. Pat McCaughan is correspondent for Provinces VII and VIII and the House of Bishops.