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After our leisurely stroll through our Lobby, it’s time to move into Quasimodo’s favorite room and ours! Say it with me now:
When we first moved into our 501 location, we had an incredible 211 people in our first service, with ample space to spread out amongst the 430-ish chairs in the room. With all the confidence of a church that had just completed its first building project, we breathed a sigh of relief, literally saying, “This will last us forever.”
Over the years, God has done what God always does: he exceeded our expectations and humbled us in the process! And what felt like a cavernous hall in 501 has now become the cozy, squished, well-loved sanctuary where our church family has gathered every week to sit under the teaching of God’s Word, to sing glorious truth together, and to participate in the regular rehearsal and celebration of the gospel. And moving to the center of the room right before offering.
So one of the main objectives in undertaking this campus expansion was to create a larger sanctuary where more of our church family can gather altogether for our worship services. And praise God, he has provided!
The new sanctuary in 529 Van Ness will approximately 900 people in 7,600 square feet, more than doubling the capacity of our current sanctuary. But the numbers just tell us how many the room will fit; the shape of the room will inform how the room will feel.
The room is shaped like a fan: the stage sits in the southwest corner with seating radiating outward. This orientation reflects two important priorities for our corporate gatherings: focus and family.
The fan-shape focuses our attention to a single point, and we’ll experience a unity as our physical space reinforces the inclination of our hearts: to look at Christ together. The focal point of the room won’t be people on a stage or an LED wall in the back: it will be the Person to whom all those things point to: Jesus Christ.
This room orientation also reinforces our identity as a family. Visioneering has done several worship centers with this layout, and the consistent response from churches is that the room feels far smaller than it actually is. When our church family gathers, we want to feel like we are together, not spread a cross a cavernous void.
The floor of the sanctuary is flat with moveable seating, like we have now. The one area of exception is a riser section in the center rear with theater-style seating so people farther back have clear sight lines to the stage. “Ooooooh!” we can hear you say. “What if we could use the space under the riser section for something cool! Like a secret room! Or storage! Or a coffee shop!” We agree that would be cool! And expensive! We explored the idea of making that space usable, but the cost to make it structurally feasible was prohibitive, so we had to give up that dream. Oh well, next time.
Can we give some context for an question that gets asked periodically: “Why is our sanctuary so dark?” Well, I’m glad you asked! When we built our 501 sanctuary in 2011, do you to know what the predominant technology was for showing graphics and lyrics in churches? LCD projectors! And do you what’s brighter than an LCD projector? THE SUN. Most projection technology was simply not bright enough to overcome even the faintest of ambient light, so in order for us to have intelligible, clearly distinguishable lyrics on our screens, we needed to black out our sanctuary. It wasn’t until the proliferation of LED technology, which found its way into theater lighting and screens, that churches had even a chance of competing with light coming in from a window.
We are officially in our LED era, and with that comes the embrace of natural light, not as an enemy, but a beloved friend. The sanctuary features some existing windows on the south side of the building, and we welcome the little bit of light that they’ll shed on our services.
The cry room sits on the east side of the sanctuary, and one design decision here was non-negotiable: parents in the cry room can see directly into the sanctuary through a pane of glass. When our families with infants come to church, we don’t want them to be relegated to a time-out room with a TV; we want them to feel like they are participating in the worship service with the rest of the church family.
As much thought has been put into what happens behind the stage as in front of the stage. We’ve designed two major support spaces accessible to the west of the sanctuary: a storage closet and a prep room.
The storage closet will be large enough to hold extra tables and chairs, as well as our ever-increasing ministry supplies, particularly those that are seasonal and don’t need to be regularly accessed. Organizationally-minded brothers and sisters, this is your time to shine! We would love for this to be a thoughtfully-arranged area that makes it easier to do all the ministry that we love to do.
We’re also creating a small prep room back stage. Those who are leading and serving during services will use this space to prepare discretely before participating in the service. Two small bathrooms in this area will be immensely helpful on those big baptism Sundays so that our baptismal candidates no longer have to make that long, drippy walk to a bathroom in the lobby.
Throughout Lighthouse’s history, God has always used whatever room we met in to point us to Christ during the corporate gathering of his people. From high school cafeterias to our current crowded sanctuary to what we hope will our new worship space, we are grateful that we walk away thinking not, “What a great service” or “What a great sanctuary,” but “What a great God.” We can’t wait to be the church family together in this new space!
Next: the Children’s Ministry and Bridge rooms!
