Burn the Pews for Firewood. (Part 3 of Five Modest Proposals for Post-Covid Churches)

This is part three of a five-part series of suggestions for churches after the Coronavirus pandemic.

Modest Proposal #3. Burn the pews for firewood.

I don’t really mean this. You don’t really have to burn the pews. You could sell them at a rummage sale. Or give them away. Or, maybe you could just turn them to face each other. (But if  you want to burn them, okay, I guess.)

Here's what I mean by proposal number three...

For the past several weeks our congregation has been meeting via Zoom. A large part of our communal time is people sharing joys and concerns. People are talking. And we can see each other. Face to face. We can hear each other. It’s intimate, it’s personal. It’s up close. Sure, we’re spread out, but we connect better this way.

The church I serve meets in a lovely edifice. Beautiful. Georgian architecture, built in 1948, copied after a quaint New England building of the 1700s. The sanctuary is grand and firm and dignified, with crisp lines and wide windows and sturdy wooden pews. The acoustics are great for a choir, so-so for preaching, and not-go-good for other things.

We sit on the hard slabs of wood and stare at the back of each other’s heads. When church attendees share joys and concerns, probably one-third of what people say is lost. It can be awkward. Honestly, it’s been fine. Until Zoom.

Now we know what it’s like to see each other’s faces, hear each other’s voices, connect in closer and new ways.

Going back to pews in lines, with muffled sound and blocked vision, may not seem so intimate, so communal.

So, that’s Proposal #3. Burn the pews. Or take them out and replace them with chairs. Or turn the pews so that they face each other across the center aisle. While we’re at it, what if we invited the choir down from the loft so they could be closer to the rest of the congregation, moved the organ to a place where the organist feels connected? What if the preacher climbed down out of a pulpit that’s six feet above contradiction and simply talked with people on a human level?

Believe me, I know the push back that will come from this suggestion. The church I previously served voted unanimously to be open to and affirming of LGBTQ persons. That was a fairly hot button social/theological issue. And we hung together. That same church group had a tie vote—a legit 50/50 split—on whether or not to replace the pews with chairs. Getting rids of pews was divisive. 

Change is hard right?

* Here's a time lapse video of National Cathedral removing the chairs. It gives you an idea of how space may be used differently.