An effort to become a more viable, welcoming church might include replacing the old straight-backed wooden pews at the Parish of St. Clement in Makiki with individual, upholstered chairs that can be configured in cozier arrangements.
"Fixed pews are just not an inviting environment for people come into, especially if they’re new people" or contending with physical challenges, says the Rev. Elizabeth Zivanov, who over the past year has been nudging her parish members to consider the advantages of chairs over pews. "We are trying to make our church more inviting, more flexible for all kinds of services and flexible for other activities," Zivanov said.
"Our current pews are over 70 years old. They’re marked; they’re gouged, worn, splintered, dirty; and they’re falling apart," she said in an interview. In addition, they’re uncomfortable for people with back problems, and difficult to navigate by way of wheelchair or walker. For some people "pews are a real turnoff," perhaps triggering memories of suffering through boring sermons, Zivanov quipped.
In the September issue of the Episcopalian church’s newsletter, Zivanov challenged parishioners to "step out of their comfort zone" and extend themselves in welcoming others into their community. And in a newsletter penned earlier this year, she urged members to be open to nontraditional ways of doing things and to step into the 21st century "as a viable and vibrant faith community."
Zivanov wrote: "A major aspect of that change is the ability of our worship space to meet the spiritual and liturgical needs of different types of worship. Are we a welcoming place for those who desire more intimate worship (or) more interactive liturgy? Are we a welcoming place for those millennials (those born in the 1980s and ’90s) who are looking for a spiritual home?
"By holding on to these pews, we insist that anyone who comes into our church and liturgy fit one form — a form that has been ‘good enough’ for the past 115 years."
Since Zivanov started her retire-the-pews campaign, "what I’ve learned is that going from pews to chairs is a big deal in a lot of parishes because people are used to pews. … ‘We’ve always had them’ is a common answer," she said.
Zivanov noted that some parish members say, "‘I want to feel like I’m in a church, and that’s what happens when I see pews.’ … There’s an attachment, especially by our long-term families, to have the pews that either their families contributed to (purchasing), or their families have always sat in the same pews in the same places, and this is where they sit."
While some members have a difficult time visualizing the interior of a church without pews, others are not eager to be seated across from parish members in a circle, Zivanov said. She admitted, "I’m a back-pew person, frankly. When I was growing up, we always sat three rows from the back on the far left. My family had its pew, too."
Addressing the matter of chair arrangement, Zivanov said, "The thing about the chairs is we can make them in any configuration we want. And if people want to have straight rows, or chevrons (an inverted-V formation), they don’t really have to look at each other, but they focus on the altar."
The proposal of switching from pews to chairs will be further discussed at full parish meetings slated for next year.
