What is the biggest obstacle to the growth of the church in Britain today? Creeping secularisation? Richard Dawkins? Infighting over women bishops or gay clergy? Let me make another suggestion: how about the continued existence of pews?
For the first 1,500 years of the church’s life, pews were extremely rare. In most medieval churches people stood or sat on the floor, with only a narrow bench around the edge of the building for seating. Eastern Orthodox churches never got around to having pews ”“ still today in Russia and Greece, worshippers stand.
When they did gradually get introduced, pews were a mixed blessing. They were intimately connected with social division and hierarchy, with pews ranked according to social standing. The rich would have large grand stalls at the front and woe betide anyone who sat in the wrong one. They were exclusive then, and they are exclusive now. Pews today effectively exclude the 90 per cent of people who are not regular attenders of services.
I’d like to hear from someone familiar with the Church of England how much trouble it would take to remove pews. I think that church continues a “faculty” system that requires church court permission and perhaps local authroity planning permissions. Many US churches have parish halls that are more or less widely used. Recently St. George’s West Asheville reconfigured the pews into three blocks two facing each other and the third centered facing the altar. The rector and vestry did the work assisted by a diocesan grant to cover the old asbestos tile floor with wood.
Someone needs to get a real job. Larry
And 1500 years ago the average person in Western Europe lived in a small dwelling with a packed dirt floor with rushes spread on the floor as a floor covering. Chairs were not in common use. Cooking was usually done over a fire in the middle of the dwelling and that fire also heated the dwelling.
There must have been some benefits to such a simple living style. But does that mean that we should return to that living style in order to regain those benefits?
Graham is not being theoretical. He is on staff of HTB where they removed the pews to accommodate 1000 regular attenders of the Alpha course, thus turning the nave into a fellowship hall. They are able to place folding chairs for the 3,000 worshipers for Sunday services, thereby restoring its original function. Most of HTB’s church plants are following the same model, which allows them to do catechesis, fellowship and worship all in the same space. Such space is a at premium in the UK, unlike the USA. Nevertheless, even in the US, we could be more economical in our use of buildings.
As the foremost trainer of lay ministers (and increasingly clergy) in the C of E, I can assure you that Graham has a job and it is bearing abundant fruit. His proposals merit serious consideration from those who desire to obey our Lord’s great commission.
If the Orthodox can live without pews, then why not the Anglicans?
It is true that, for instance, Washington National Cathedral has chairs instead of pews, but in practice the effort needed to rearrange four thousand chairs means that they never get rearranged or for that matter moved much at all.
My feeling about this is, to use a singularly inapt simile, that it is so much like moving deck chairs around on a certain doomed ocean liner. It seems to me that our problems with sacredness of spaces doesn’t have a lot to do with the seating arrangements, but rather with the whole direction of how they are used, and our attitudes towards their use.
NewTroll, it is not as true as the rigorists would like you to think that the Orthodox do not have pews. For example, the Ukrainian church near my house, mostly built by immigrants and until fairly recently serving a mostly immigrant congregation, is full of pews. The Malankara church a bit further off did not remove the pews when they took over their church from the Baptists. The Greek church I visited in Great Falls had pews. They are perhaps not the norm in the USA, but then a lot of the pressure to not have them comes from differentiation, and some of that pressure comes from Protestant converts.
Come on now, let’s be honest, the naive is part of the worship space. It is not a gathering place for the masses to do x, y, and z. What Tomlin is suggesting is that it either could or should be a gathering place and he has an argument for it. But the question is whether our churches are community centers or places with set apart worship spaces. I have never been to a church in the US that has not had some kind of fellowship hall that is set apart for the other functions needed in the church and a worship space set apart for, well, worship. It is truly sad when we begin to say that setting apart space for worship only is not economical.
Something else that he is missing is that he is still going by the old Christendom model that we do worship and people magically show up because they should. If we look back to when the church was not in a Christendom model, back when people always stood for worship, people came to the Church, not because the worship space was an open theater for whatever would make the church money or make people comfortable, but because somebody had witnessed Christ into their life. It was one-on-one evangelism done by everyone that drew people because people saw changed lives and the power of God working in those lives to change them. And I would have to say that a more honest reason that people do not go to church is not because there are pews but because the Church today does not do very well being the church. There is no witness that speaks to God’s love and people’s need to receive that love. Those that do hear it, unfortunately, often are not encouraged and equipped to proclaim it to their friends.
So, remove the pews or preach Christ (and make sure that worship space remains worship space (which can be done without pews, but this is not the end Tomlin has in mind)).
Is the suggestion that there would be more room in the church without pews? That’s certainly the case, but is there a problem of *over* crowding in Anglican churches? Losing the pews might make the stark look starker.
Umm, I think I’d rather have a pew to sit in, thank you very much!
Wingate, converts to orthodoxy are not ‘pew’ sitters. They tend to go with the tradition. Chairs are provided at the sides for the elderly. Converts are enamored of the tradition and are content to go ‘total’. However, I do think that pews are an integral part of the ‘Anglican way’ and are as much critical part of Anglican orthodoxy as the 1559 BCP. If this guy is HTB, then that just goes to show you we are on the slope.
The experience may have worked for HTB, but I do not think he makes the general argument here:
This is really just assuming the conclusion. Does he have survey data? Is this really the primary impediment for 90% of the non-attending population?
IMHO, there is a temptation to survey one’s experience and try to identify just the right formula, whether purpose-driven, hymn-free, or pew-less.
And, as noted above, for those churches with alternate space, the argument to discard (waste) existing seating is truly inapposite.
Re #7
C Wingate
While it is true that here in N. America pews did creep into Orthodox church buildings it was mostly during a time frame when there was a conscious effort on the part of the Orthodox to “blend in.” Foreigners then (as now) often were treated with suspicion and were the victims of discrimination. Many Orthodox jurisdictions here aggressively pushed their parishes and clergy to make concessions to western sensibilities. Thus we have parishes with pews, and for a long time many of our clergy were clean shaven and they wore western clerical attire.
That said pews, while not exactly heretical, are not conducive to an Orthodox phronema. It’s hard to do full body prostrations in a pew. And the traditional posture for prayer is standing. In recent years there has been a movement away from the western affectations as Orthodox have become more comfortable here. Many new parishes are built without them and some old ones have removed theirs. It is now rare to see Orthodox clergy without a beard and it is increasingly common to see them wearing the traditional cassock.
In my diocese the policy for more than a decade has been that new parishes are not to have pews.
In ICXC
John
There is a great deal of mythology and romanticism about Orthodox praxis but when push comes to shove one can find inconsistency almost anywhere. The Ukrainian and Malankara churches I mentioned are pretty young, on the order of a decade or two at most, so we aren’t talking about early 20th century “fitting in” in either case. The former is rather ostentatiously Orthodox in form, but its iconography is typically 19th century in style rather than the more medieval revival style of the 20th, and my guess is that this what the immigrants who built it were accustomed to. I can resist the urge to talk about convert “affectations” but having been to some very ethnic services which were rather, um, bus-station-like in their aesthetick, there’s something to be said for western “affectations” like showing up on time and being quiet and attentive and staying for the whole thing instead of going out on the porch for a smoke. My (western) opinion of course.
I’ve heard the statement about prostrations before. But then, if you look at the 1979 BCP (and even more so, its predecessors) they presume that a lot of kneeling may (and in 1979 definitely was) done through the course of a liturgy. When one piles on all the unwritten rubrics of a high Eucharist of the time, one gets the “Episcopal aerobics” in which seating (and kneelers) played an essential role. Removing the seats in practice results in the same sort of impoverishment which it is said the presence of pews produces in Orthodox churches; it diminishes the meaning of standing for particular parts of the service if one can never do anything but stand.
AnglicanFirst, the author of the article did not write “1500 years ago”, but “For the first 1,500 years of the church’s life” which is very different!
InChristAlone wrote, “the naive is part of the worship space”. Yes, and so is the Nave! But then, that’s what the patristic and medieval christians thought too, and they didn’t have pews. There were seats against the wall for those who couldn’t stand, hence we say that “the weakest go to the wall”. But everyone else stood, or knelt, or prostrated themselves as they felt led. And they found this quite worshipful.
Normative Orthodox worship is much closer to true tradition than our ornate 19th-century-design pews.
The history of the pew is rather mixed. They began to really spread after the Restoration in England, and it wasn’t long before they had a distinct tone of wealth about them – parishes often raised funds by requiring families to buy their own pews, which they would then seal off from anyone else’s use. There was also an outbreak of pew-building in the 19th century, when many people fondly thought they were “restoring medieval tradition” by adding pews to churches, not realising that they were actually doing the opposite.
I find a good pew can be very restful for worship, especially when it comes to kneeling. But they are not mandated by scripture (nor by the church fathers, ecumenical councils, John Wyclif or Thomas Aquinas for that matter)!
MichaelA said,
“AnglicanFirst, the author of the article did not write “1500 years agoâ€, but “For the first 1,500 years of the church’s life†which is very different!”
True, regarding a point in time 1500 years ago and a span of 1500 years. But, for most of that 1500 year span, the dwelloings of the majority of individuals were as humble as I described. At least that’s what historians say.
One line of approach not pursued (interestingly) so far is – flexibility. And not just re the varied use of space overall already mentioned; but rather chairs (and small tables added if desired) permit a wider variety of forms of worship services. In fact, open plan church buildings are limited in their use only by a lack of imagination. And that primarily is what Graham is also suggesting, I reckon: use your space [i]more imaginatively[/i] for worshiping God. Pews restrict! And I agree
All this argument about pews? Please. Where’s the underground nopewster when you need him. L
… hiding under his pew?
MichaelA, sorry if my spelling is not always correct. That happens on a computer so give me a break. My point was not that pews are a necessary thing in order for the nave to be a part of the worship space (that’s what the last parenthetical statement was addressing) but the author’s point is not for it to be just a worship space, but a community center for all kinds of activities that are not directed towards God’s worship in the space that is supposedly set apart for that reason, not simply a space that is temporarily set apart for worship because for whatever reason, like a church that has no set building.
Pews are not a panacea to church growth; nor should they be fetishized. Not all churches require pews, or their absence. A church that could seat 400, but has an ASA of 40, pews make a church seem museum like.
A church that is willing, however, to change its internal space shows a willingness to seekers. God does not require pews; neither should we be fooled that we require them. They are functional seats. And sometimes they don’t function well.
InChristAlone,
Breaks are always given. We’re laughing with you, not at you!