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Welcome! Spaces for Worship explores the varities of ways Christians organize and decorate their worship spaces using examples in and around Birmingham, Alabama. Whether you are a worship leader, a student of Christian worship, or just a worshiper, this site is for you! It will help you understand the variety of Christian worship spaces and how they work. There are a number of linked pages grouped into three sections. Frameworks offers ways of ideas for how to think about worship spaces. Varieties focuses on eight typical arrangements of worship spaces and explores a specific example. Eras discusses the history of worship spaces in Birmingham from 1871 to the present. Throughout the focus is on the interior of the churches’ worship spaces, not their exteriors, or their place on architectural history. For that dimension of these churches please see John Schnorrenberg, Aspiration: Birmingham’s Historic Houses of Worship.
Click the links below to start exploring or scroll down the page to follow the essays in sequence.
Christians worship in and with their bodies. It is something done with others. Thus, where Christians worship matters. Our senses perceive the space and shape our experience. Spaces make somethings easy and other things difficult. So while the most important thing is to worship “in spirit and in truth” (John 4:23), Christians need to take care of how the places they worship shape their worship. As Winston Churchill said, “We shape our buildings; thereafter they shape us.” The arrangement and decoration or worship spaces shapes worshipers’ relationships with themselves and with God. To understand how they do, scholars of worship have developed a number of frameworks. Click here to continue.
This site was released on July 2, 2024. We welcome comments and suggestions for corrections. Please email David Bains at drbains@samford.edu.
- Glossary of select terms.
- References.
- Table of Contents.
- Map of Sites Discussed with Links to Essays.
This page is part of “Spaces for Worship: A Birmingham-Based Introduction,” a section of Magic City Religion, written by the editor, David R. Bains, and funded by Samford University’s Center for Worship and the Arts.
Magic City Religion 