Tuesday, September 16, 2008

Church of the Resurrection in Newfoundland

Does this look familiar? Doug C. calls my attention to the Church of the Resurrection in Newfoundland. Collegiate-style (aka Choir-style) seating across a central axis that begins with font and pascal candle, continues through the ambo, and ends in the altar.

On the left we see that a warm, welcoming, and essentially domestic greeting space opens generously onto the principle worship axis beginning with the font and leading the ambo.

A nice looking Ambo that illustrates the concept well--note the teaching Christ icon and the Bema-style solidity of it. This is no mere lectern!

A large square altar with President's chair behind. The square shape helps reinforce the equality of participation while the chair preserves apostolic presidency.

Another view showing how the altar relates to the rest of the space. Although it's not elevated as it is in some places, the path between the two poles of Word and Table is a powerful negative space that draws out attention.

From the church's website:
Because we recognize that the “Church” is the people, we want to avoid calling our building or any part of it the “church.” The place where we gather for prayer is called the “Oratory”, which is Latin for “place of prayer.”

The Oratory is designed with the principles of equality of celebration, participation verses spectation, and flexibility of liturgical space.

The altar table and the ambo (table of the Word) are placed at opposite ends of the oratory to enable liturgical action to take place in the whole of the oratory. Sitting in the “round,” with the use of chairs, also enables the gathered community not only to be drawn into the liturgy, but to face one another and to acknowledge Christ’s presence in the other. The use of chairs, instead of pews, also allows us to be more flexible in the liturgical use of our space. (source)

I'm looking forward to returning to a configuration like this for Advent this year. We learned a few things from previous experiments that will help in the next iteration.

-t

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