We are in the middle of moving our church offices and worship gathering location. We are relocating from the campus of Santa Cruz Bible Church, which is a very new contemporary building built about 6 years ago to a very beautiful brick church building built in 1938. We will launching an additional Sunday morning worship gathering the week after Easter and holding our evening gathering there too. The building is somewhat in need of a face-lift and updating - as despite the beauty of it, there are things in it like bulletin boards, carpets, furniture and wallpaper I think have been there since 1938 and even have distinct odors of being there since 1938.
In preparation of moving over there, we have been doing a bunch of redecorating and remodeling of the children's rooms, the offices and now working on the Fellowship Hall turning it into a coffeehouse/art gallery. The whole place was gutted as of last night when I was there. However, one thing that is very puzzling and tormenting me, is the "pews" in the sanctuary. This sanctuary is entirely all pews. I have never been part of a church that has pews, so these things are very confusing to me.
The oddness of the pews
As I look at the pews in the church - and sat in the pews in this church, all these emotions come into my mind. These things are so small. You have to squeeze in to get into them. I talked to someone from this church, who said he can't even sit in them because he is too tall and he sits in the back in a chair. They also are very uncomfortable and creaky. Wooden seats with a little red cushion. Once you sit in them and other people sit next to you, you are stuck. It is too tiny to even squeeze past other people to get out. Kind of like being in the window seat of an airplane and needing to get out and make your way past two other people in the seats next to you is what these pews are like.
It's an issue of theology - not comfortability
However - sitting comfortably actually isn't the issue to me - as most of the time, I sit on the floor at Vintage Faith Church. I also know we are fortunate to have a roof over our head to worship in, and many Christians in other countries don't have buildings at all or are persecuted for their faith - so this is all in perspective. So,the "comfortable" factor is actually the least of my concerns. I think my dilemma and concern of the pews is what they communicate and what they teach theologically.
I tried to do some research on where these strange things called "pews" came from.
The church did not use "pews" for over 1,000 year after the church was born. In the original vintage church, they met in homes, so the feeling was family, community looking at one another, interacting with one another. The first formal building the church met in weekly was in the post-300 AD time period and modeled after the Roman Basilica (law court) and in these buildings people stood the whole time. There were no seats at all. So even standing, meant interacting and the freedom to walk around and not be locked into one place. In the 13th Century, there were backless benches made of stone placed against walls. They are first were placed in a semi-circle around the meeting room and then eventually fixed to the floor.
In the 14th century the "pews" as we know them were introduced, but were not popularized into church architecture until the 15th century. Wood benches with backs replaced stone seats. Remember, at this time period, the Reformation was happening where the pulpit was introduced as the focal point of church architecture - so the pews then became the places where people took seats to focus on the pulpit and the sermon which was shaped into a certain more formal format at the time of Reformation. It was so people of the Reformation and what was happening could sit and listen to a preacher. They didn't have Bibles on their own, they didn't read for the most part, so in response to what was going on culturally in the early Reformation period they made rows of seats to sit and listen to someone preach.
How we sit and arrange a room reflect our values and theology of "church"
The theology in this is fascinating - as how we sit when we meet reflects what we place as important in worship. The original vintage church met in homes, it was communal, looking at each other in small rooms, discussing and teaching Scripture, praying for one another and eating a meal together. You could walk around, have dialog etc. Then the church moved into buildings where the Table (the Lord's Supper) was the focal point and we stood, moved around the room, interacted etc. Then we moved into buildings where the pews caused people to sit in stationary positions, not looking at each other, but looking at the pulpit and all facing the same direction. This drastically changes the culture and climate of how we view when the church gathers to worship. It becomes more of a sit and watch and listen meeting, than an interactive community type of a meeting.
I say all this, as I love tracing back why we do what we do and why no one questions too often why we do what we do. What we do reflects our theological beliefs and values in many ways - and the pews reflect how we think of what is supposed to happen in worship gatherings. It seems like an odd thing where we meet as a church "family" or we invite someone to experience and be part of a church community, bring them into a room and make them sit for over an hour on these benches crammed in looking at each others back of heads staring at the front of the room. I don't think in our own families, we would have a family meeting and then sit in rows on wooden benches not looking at each other. I am trying to imagine Jesus and His disciples having the last supper meal and sitting in rows of pews as they met. Or as Jesus was teaching them, he made them all sit in rows in pews. It seems His teaching was wherever they were, probably in boats, walking, on hillsides.
For us as a church, pews are almost the exact opposite of how we set our culture to be in worship. We give people the opportunity to walk around, to go to prayer stations, to lay down or sit on the floor if they feel that is how they desire to express worship or pray. To be "respectfully relaxed" when we meet, probably like the early church was meeting in homes to some degree.
We try not to put focus on one person preaching and all seats locked in to face that person the whole time, and we go to extra effort to set up a mix of round tables and chairs to try and create a vibe of community, rather than rows of people looking at backs of heads and sitting stationary like in a bus or airplane or movie theater. So this move to a pew filled room for worship is not very "vintage faith".
Ironically, "worship" is not passive or just sitting down looking in one direction
The common words for worship in the Bible interestingly is "to bow down" or "to kiss towards" which both are actions of the body moving, kneeling, laying down. So the pews actually prohibit that from happening - what worship in the meaning of the word even is.
I guess as I think of pews, I feel restriction, formality, can't move around, can't kneel down, can't leave to go to prayer areas or pray with someone too easily. I think of looking at backs of heads. It seems such a far cry from the original church worship gathering and what we at Vintage Faith are used to.
We have discussed moving the pews out of the sanctuary little by little - and leaving just a few of them, so that will most likely happen in time. We cannot remove them now as to the people who worship there now, they do mean something in terms of what they are used to. So removing them would be too much at first. But - I look forward to the removal of some of the pews. They are very, very odd things and they communicate theologically things about what "church" is, that I find somewhat contradictory to what the vintage values of when the church gathered was about, as well as how we normally worship as Vintage Faith giving a lot of freedom to people. We do have sermons, where people mainly sit - but we do lots of things outside the sermon for people to move about, pray, kneel, participate in prayer stations etc.
Again - this is all said in light of the fact that we should be thankful to have any place to meet or that we are not under persecution, and it petty in relationship to the AIDS crisis and famines and many global issues that make me feel silly even being bothered by having pews. But they are a real thing. And we shall be sitting in them soon.
The oddness of the pews haunts me today. It is raining out. Maybe that is why I am thinking about them right now. The pews. The pews. Oh my.
