subject: Worship Seating [print this page] The choice of seating in religious venues has undergone a transformation in the past few decades. Many institutions have opted to move toward more non-traditional seating to accommodate their own budgetary constraints and to meet the needs of the worshipers attending their institutions services. Worship Seating now embodies a wide breadth of possible products and solutions while it once may have referred strictly to hard wooden benches and pews.
Costs have risen for the traditional solid wood furniture that most people think of when they imagine traditional religious seating. As markets tighten for the types of woods, such as rare mahoganies and others, prices have risen substantially. This means that already tight budgets are strained further when it comes to upgrading an institutions seating if it falls into disrepair.
Its not always about money either. Many parishes and places of worship are thriving financially. Another issue that they consider, however, is the sustainability of the materials going into a seating project. Many pews are made of rare woods now exported from forests being threatened by environmental changes as well as over-foresting. While the pews of earlier generations may have come from nearby domestic forests, they are ever increasingly being exported from threatened woodlands in impoverished countries which arent doing an acceptable job to promote the sustainability of those resources or the sustainability of the ecosystems that are being destroyed in order to provide that material.
Upon considering the moral and financial implications, another component to be considered is the comfort of seating. In generations past, and particularly in some Christian denominations, worship was intentionally meant to be an uncomfortable affair. Hard wooden benches we meant to show a degree of sacrifice was involved in attending a service. Today in most developed countries that view is shifting toward a more moderated view that comfort is a good thing. With that in mind, many venues are converting their seating to a more modern type of fixed seating chair, akin to what one would find in a concert hall or theater. The typical fixed seating chair employs upholstered and thick cushions, armrests, and folding bottom to allow for easier passage through the rows of chairs.
Todays Worship Seating has been undergoing a transformation. Modern economic realities, as well as shifting norms in religious practice have placed emphasis in different areas and allowed a new world of choices to be opened up to the project manager deciding what seating to employ for their religious venue.
