The last six months to a year your church have been focusing on the needs of the community. With a higher than average population of lower income residents, the neighborhoods surrounding your church include many families who are struggling. And while there are many food pantries closer to downtown, there are few pantry and emergency food options in the suburbs. In an effort to rethink a recently vacated space in one of the church basements, the church council decided to remodel the space to serve as an emergency food pantry.
Open every Saturday morning for three hours and one Tuesday afternoon and evening a week, the pantry is already serving 15 to 20 families in just the first two months that it has been open. Feeling good about the service that the congregation is now providing to those outside of the congregation, the church council is now ready to address some of the needs of the congregation itself. The top two items on the list are refurbishing or replacing the pews in the sanctuary and checking into the alternative church steeple plans that are available.
From a distance, both the pews and the steeple appear to be fine. The Sunday when the 8:00 am service had to meet in the chapel because there was a bat in the sanctuary, however, served as a wake up call to a couple of maintenance issues.
The need for church steeple plans became apparent when the maintenance crew discovered that there were actually a number of bats living in the steeple. In fact, it seemed that it was a minor miracle that a bat had not made its way into the sanctuary sooner. The building committee has decided to look into a number of church steeple plans to see if there is a better option, one with no openings that would allow a bat to make it from the bell tower into the sanctuary.
The second maintenance issue that came to light the morning of the bat incident was the condition of the church pews. A couple of congregation members were standing in the alter area looking out at the church pews and noticed how worn these furniture pieces were looking. As a result, the church council decided that since the group had just finished a large project that addressed the greater needs of the surrounding community it would now be a good time to look within the building space itself and make some improvements. Although the council was fairly certain that they did not want to look at the option of looking at used church pews, they also knew that they did not necessarily want to look at purchasing new church furniture either. As a compromise, the council decided the best plan might be to look at the options for refinishing the current pews.
Church Buildings and Furniture Often Requires the Attention of Specialists
Whether your council is looking at options for updating the church steeple plans in your space or you are considering the options of buying new or refurbishing church pews, it should come as no surprise that there are specific companies that can offer both suggestions and services. Consider some of these facts and figures about church pews and other kinds of church specific furniture pieces:
- Before the Protestant Reformation, churches were not commonly furnished with permanent pews.
- The fact that many church services last an hour or more has made the need for comfortable seating somewhat necessary. In fact, when the sermon became a central act of Christian worship, especially in Protestantism, pews became a standard piece of furniture in many churches.
- Although some pews are a simply standard format made of wood, some church pews have benchlike cushioned seating, as well as hassocks or footrests.
- Before the first pews were introduced in the 13th century, removable stone benches were placed against church walls.
Although no church wants to spend all of its time looking inward at congregational issues, if your church has recently spent time looking outward at the needs of the community, perhaps it is time that you spend a little energy looking inward at any updates that may need to be made to your space.
