Removal of pews from churches.

[Helendee]

Can I ask for opinions on the above please.
It seems to be the growing trend to remove pews and replace them with stackable chairs in Anglican churches and I for one am really saddened by it.
I know it’s only aesthetics and that the pews don’t make the church but my parish church now looks as if it’s a concert hall and not a place of worship!

I don’t see why I shouldn’t be allowed to feel sadness at what I personally feel to be desecration of the church I was married in, my four children attended Sunday school in and I have worshipped in for most of my life.
Part of the beauty of religion is finding comfort in the rituals and timeless services that have endured for centuries. Not everyone adjusts easily to change.

No one is saying you can't feel sad! Of course it can be sad to let go of things. But you asked for opinions and some parishioners feeling sad at pews going probably does not outweigh the reasons for getting chairs instead. That's all!

"Ours is medieval, and would not have had pews (or any seats) originally - pews tend to be Georgian or Victorian, so relatively recent."

Also, this!

No bit the implication that you must be a pearl clutcher because you don’t agree with it is a little OTT.

Opinions invited, no need for snarkiness.

I think it's marvellous, I am very pleased to have a beautiful old pew/bench in my kitchen.

Roystonv for your information Messy Church is very much work done to the glory of God, you should try it sometime.

OP it sounds like pews to chairs is one of a number of changes that have happened at your Church recently. So maybe the chair thing isn't the main issue for you if you are uncomfortable with the current style of Worship.

Montypinepine
Yes possibly, but the church has changed dramatically visually and I feel it has lost its beautiful atmosphere along with it.

It really does feel like a recording studio of something, not a church.

Well I understand your feeling of loss? The church building you attend has obviously played a large part in significant areas of your life and you are not unreasonable for feeling sad that things change. I also think that a huge change like the one you describe can completely change the character of a building and therefore you will feel less at home for a while. (Maybe forever).
Are there any other people there that share your views? Did you know about the changes? Were you consulted?

It sounds like there has been some kind of change of leadership and some radical changes are being made across the board. Is it CofE?

In regards to the point made about preserving old buildings. This is all well and good but the upkeep of these historical buildings can be astronomical and I absolutely see no reason to hang on to every relic and piece of history. They are money pits and I firmly believe that Jesus was not about wasting money or preserving something needlessly.

I think it's marvellous, I am very pleased to have a beautiful old pew/bench in my kitchen. Philistine.

my church is now home to a large stage with microphones and a drum kit and looks like a concert venue. People have been know to have spiritual experiences at concerts, just saying.

I’ve moved house and so attend a new Anglican Church with a gorgeous old building and refurbed interior - it has chairs, a full speaker system, microphone and electric organ. I love it. The sound quality from the electric organ is gorgeous, and the seats work really well because they can add, remove and reposition based on how large they expect the congregation to be. When there are joint services we all fit in, but then don’t feel so spread out on ‘normal’ weeks.

And that's the end of the pews, now here's the weather.

You have my sympathy, OP. I think there is a problematic tendency for many churches to over-emphasise "moving on" and looking after the (perceived) needs of younger people, at the expense of thinking about what their older members know and enjoy and need. There are phases to life, and in some of those phases our religion is more overtly important than in others. Older age is definitely one of those phases and this is part of the reason older people are more represented in many churches!

Where I grew up, at one point the leaders of the church in the whole city were seriously inadequate, which I perceived to be due to them having trained lots of people for youth ministry over several decades, but not done enough to ensure a breadth of skills across the clergy, so that they found themselves without suitable people to be leaders at all.

Our church got rid of the pews twenty odd years ago and replaced them with solid, comfy wooden chairs. We don't have a church hall so it's important that we can use the space for community events. But also, it allows for flexibility in the actual services - the annual carol service is very busy and popular, being able to rearrange the chairs allows us to fit more people in; when we have a baptism service we can set up the pool in the middle of church with the chairs arranged around it; when we have events like our advent prayer morning we can set up prayer stations around the church and a labyrinth in the middle; last night we had our evening worship service with the altar in the middle of the church and the chairs arranged around it in a circle for holy communion.
The church I grew up in removed a couple of rows of pews from the back of church to make a community area and people actually stopped coming to a church they had attended for years because "their" bench wasn't there anymore.
Church is so much more than bricks and mortar and wooden pews; a beautiful building is nice but it's a thriving congregation that makes a living church - if modernising things a bit encourages more people to step inside the building, then I'm all for it!

And that's the end of the pews, now here's the weather.

You do know that within the history of church buildings, pews are a relatively new concept!? Removal of pews is a harking back to the more flexible space rather than a segregation by class and money whereby one bought the right to sit in a specified zone. Churches are not there for the worship or veneration of the past - they are there to enable people to worship and glorify God.

I agree with you OP - not all change is good. Many churches are beautiful, historic buildings and ripping the guts out in the name of 'progress' (or more likely, to make money from selling them off) is just wrong.

And from a cynical pov, when booking a wedding, people might choose a church partly based on the beauty of the building. If it looks like a conference hall, couples might take their wedding to a different venue, costing the church revenue and potentially new visitors.

I absolutely agree OP and quite frankly I don't care if they are relatively recent. Pews are lovely. Replacing wooden pews with plastic chairs is awful and bad for the environment. Why shouldn't we deserve to wirship in beautiful surroundings? My local church is a bit of a 60s monstrosity but it does have wooden pews!

Did god change when they removed the pews? If you’re going to church for the aesthetics, then that’s not really the right motivation. Church should be able to happen anywhere, to be honest, it’s not like Jesus has pews. To be honest, considering they were Romans, they were probably all half lying down. I don’t understand - it’s not throwing away of the old, it’s moving as time moves. Once upon a one pews didn’t exist. The only reason churches had pulpits was so the minister could be heard, we now have microphones. Ultimately the reasons people go to church are not defined by the building. And nor should they be.

Did god change when they removed the pews?
So why don't we just sell off all the stained glass and choices and put in double glazing and pop down to Ikea for some plastic cups?

*choices = chalices!

They are very rarely replaced with plastic chairs though, so the "bad for the environment" argument doesn't really apply. As I said earlier, we have comfy, wooden chairs, other churches I've been in have metal framed, cushioned chairs.

Our church did this and it revitalised the congregation. We have so many lovely young families now. Embrace the change OP

We already have lots of young families. As I have already said, the congregation is flourishing and people of all ages worship there, there isn’t a need to get more bums on pews, so to speak!
No I won’t embrace the change as it feels intrinsically wrong to me.

I think a mixture of pews and chairs work well. That's the way a lot of churches are going, which i think is fine.

I'm thrilled we removed the pews. The chairs are more comfortable- they can be locked into bench rows to preserve the traditional format, or arranged in a circle for a smaller service.

We can serve dinner to the elderly and people in wheelchairs or with push chairs can go wher they like.

We can put blocks under the legs to raise one chair up or someone after a hip replacement.

And when we took the pews out, we took the opportunity to put heating in. Bliss.