{"id":1170,"date":"2018-10-08T08:25:41","date_gmt":"2018-10-08T14:25:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.elca.org\/worship\/?p=1170"},"modified":"2018-10-08T08:25:41","modified_gmt":"2018-10-08T14:25:41","slug":"a-view-into-the-common-room-a-story-of-one-worship-spaces-transformation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.elca.org\/worship\/1170\/","title":{"rendered":"A View into the “Common Room”: A Story of One Worship Space’s Transformation"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Today\u2019s post is by Timothy Weisman, Pastor of Zion Lutheran Church in Pittsfield, Massachusetts. In many ways, this post is a visual blog with accompanying narration. The photos by Weisman and Keith Perry\u00a0illustrate how a major renovation of Zion\u2019s worship space has shaped and served their community.<\/i><\/div>\n
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On November 18, 2014, at the urging of a parent, the property committee at Zion Lutheran Church in Pittsfield, Massachusetts voted to do something quite radical for the time: we voted to create a “Pray & Play” area in our sanctuary where kids could feel comfortable and where young families could worship together with age-appropriate activities. While it might have been the combination of bean bag chairs, ELWs, foam blocks, and books about Martin Luther and Ella Fitzgerald that initially caught a newcomer\u2019s eye, what most people seemed to notice first was that we had removed two adjacent pews in the center of our sanctuary to make room.<\/p>\n

Just two years later, we removed the remaining forty-six pews.<\/p>\n

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In 2017, the people of Zion Lutheran Church, recognizing that our 1892 Neo-gothic sanctuary was overdue for a major investment, completed a $1.2 million project that transformed it into a renewed place for worship and community. While this included adding accessible routes and restrooms, replastering and repainting the walls, replacing all the lighting, and even adding air-conditioning, what most people (still) seem to notice first is that we removed all the pews and replaced them with chairs.<\/p>\n

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This is my testimony to you: it feels good\u00a0<\/em>to worship in a sanctuary in which the seating is more than twenty percent filled. The singing is fabulous\u00a0<\/em>when the community worships close together. Need space for a baptism and six confirmations at an Easter Vigil? Just make the open space between the font and the chairs larger. Need space for piano, string bass, and drums for Jazz Vespers, our monthly evening prayer? Just move the altar table back a few feet.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Because nothing is nailed down, Zion Lutheran Church has been able to host public concerts, theatre rehearsals, interviews, annual meetings, farmers markets, community dinners, and events for children and youth. In our first year, over twelve thousand people have walked through our doors for worship or a community event in our Common Room, the name for our sanctuary.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Last year, at an indoor farmers market we host, I was asked with some amount of disbelief, \u201cWait a second\u2014is this still a real\u00a0<\/em>church?\u201d (I replied with an emphatic “yes!”) But I\u2019ll admit that there have been more than a few Sunday mornings when I\u2019ve arrived to worship in a sanctuary that looks more exhausted than sacred. First, I gently remind myself that I don\u2019t always look so good, either\u2014and I remember that in our worship, our hearing of God\u2019s Word, our praying, and our singing, not only are we renewed to serve our community, but so is this Common Room. For that, I give extra\u00a0thanks and praise.<\/p>\n

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“In its best sense preservation does not mean merely the setting aside of thousands of buildings as museum pieces. It means retaining the culturally valuable structures as useful objects: a home in which human beings live, a building in the service of some commercial or community purpose.” Lady Bird Johnson in her forward to With Heritage So Rich, a report by the National Trust for Historic Preservation (1966)<\/em><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today\u2019s post is by Timothy Weisman, Pastor of Zion Lutheran Church in Pittsfield, Massachusetts. In many ways, this post is a visual blog with accompanying narration. The photos by Weisman and Keith Perry\u00a0illustrate how a major renovation of Zion\u2019s worship space has shaped and served their community.   On November 18, 2014, at the urging […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":241,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1170","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-post"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nA View into the "Common Room": A Story of One Worship Space's Transformation - ELCA Worship<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/blogs.elca.org\/worship\/1170\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"A View into the "Common Room": A Story of One Worship Space's Transformation - ELCA Worship\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Today\u2019s post is by Timothy Weisman, Pastor of Zion Lutheran Church in Pittsfield, Massachusetts. 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