WORSHIP IN A BOX
Chuck Stober
January 1, 1990
I hadn't been inside a church for three years. I'd seen no sanctuary, no cross on the wall behind the pulpit, no pews, no stained glass, no engraved communion table. For three years at Heritage Church in Aurora, Colorado, I led worship inside a box-well, actually an elementary school gymnasium. Instead of ornate banners declaring truth about God, the walls of the "sanctuary" were lined with sports posters and exercise equipment. Four regulation basketball hoops hung above us, and volleyball poles congregated in a corner-symbols of a competing American religion. The orange, all-purpose carpet had enough out-of-bounds lines to play most any sport. The mercury-activated lights hummed as loud as a swarm of bees. Yet my fate wasn't unusual. Box churches are popping up all over-in gymnasiums, recreation centers, and storefronts. Heritage Church was in a building program, hoping one day to trade our box for a sanctuary. In the meantime, we had to face an important issue: Could we effectively worship while we waited in our hollow box? We decided we could worship perfectly well where we were. And so can others. Worship can be spirited and meaningful in an empty storefront, as it is in a grand Gothic cathedral or a state-of-the-art worship center. It's a matter of creativity within available limitations. Our solutions were simple, but they transformed our gymnasium into a worship center. Here's what we did. Establish a focal point
In a church building, a raised chancel provides a focal point for worship, directing attention not only toward God but also toward the leaders of worship. Like most smaller gymnasiums, however, ours lacked a built-in stage. So we had to improvise. We discovered an inexpensive way to create a chancel area: build ...
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