Out with the pews, in with the people

By Gary Stern
The Journal News
November 7, 2008

WHITE PLAINS — Can removing two dozen pews from the front of a spacious but mostly empty Episcopal church help revitalize a once mighty parish that's fallen on hard times?

This is the hope at St. Bartholomew's Church, one of dozens of shrinking mainline churches in the Lower Hudson Valley that are hungry to reel in some of the many suburban families that spend Sunday mornings at soccer practice or Home Depot.

At St. Bart's, as everyone calls the 80-year-old church, the goal when extracting the pews in early fall was to create a more intimate worship space that might appeal to visitors who stick their heads in the doors on Sunday (or at least not scare them off).

"When people visited before, it seemed like a museum," said the Rev. Gawain de Leeuw, rector of St. Bart's for five years. "The church seemed empty. Each person could have had their own pew. Changing our sanctuary space immediately changed the way people feel in the church. It's an important start."

During its heyday in the 1950s, St. Bart's would get more than 1,000 people for Sunday services. Today, the church might see 50 or 60 people between the 8 a.m. and 10 a.m. services...

....Showing the way is de Leeuw, 39, who is working toward a doctorate in "congregational development" from Seabury-Western Theological Seminary in Evanston, Ill. In other words, he is studying the latest research on church growth - which has become an academic field of its own - and using St. Bart's as a willing laboratory.

"Demographically, St. Bart's should work," he said. "If I can keep the vision, keep the people together, this place can explode."

And what is that vision? De Leeuw wants St. Bart's to be a place where people on all sorts of spiritual quests can come for inspiration, sustenance in tough times, friendly conversation or a good debate.

"I probably have more in common with a Muslim sufi or (Zen Buddhist) Thich Nhat Hanh than I do with Sarah Palin," he said. "I believe that this area could support a progressive church that believes in evolution and pluralism and openness toward people."

Like growing numbers of Episcopal priests, he won't say that Jesus is the only way to salvation.

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