The Preacher's Relationship To His Surroundings

Introduction: The Preacher's Relationship to the Physical Environment

0:02 Well, we come this morning, brethren, to the fifth and final aspect of the act of preaching. And for our brethren visiting with us, perhaps just briefly to review what we've covered this semester, we have dealt with the act of preaching, first of all, as it relates to the servant of God preaching and his present relationship to God in the activity of preaching. So we've considered the act of preaching in the preacher's relationship to God. And then we've considered the act of preaching in the preacher's relationship to himself, his physical appearance and bearing, the matter of his emotions, his voice, physical action in preaching. Then we've considered the act of preaching and the preacher's relationship to his people or his congregation, and then we considered the act of preaching and the preacher's relationship to his paper and now we come to consider this morning the fifth aspect of this matter of the act of preaching namely the act of preaching in relationship to the general physical environment of the preaching

1:24 the general physical environment of the preaching and by way of introduction let me underscore several things in order to put our study in a biblical and realistic context and I have three things to say by way of introduction first of all we must remind ourselves that we are not preaching to disembodied spirits or to insensitive bodily creatures we must remind ourselves that we are not preaching to disembodied spirits we must remind ourselves that we are not preaching to disembodied spirits we must remind ourselves and that continually that we are not preaching to disembodied spirits or to insensitive bodily creatures whenever we stand to preach no matter how much God by his spirit enables us to be conscious of our living present communion with him no matter how much we may be conscious of the present aid and support of the Holy Spirit no matter how helpful our notes before us may be we are preaching to real men and real women boys and girls with real bodies and furthermore these bodies by divine design have ears

2:50 eyes, lungs, backs and buttocks and if the eyes cannot plainly see us we are preaching to real men and real women or cannot plainly see the Bible open before our people the minds of our people will find it difficult to concentrate upon our preaching if the ears of our listeners cannot hear us distinctly because there is a poor acoustical context of our preaching their minds will not clearly grasp the truth proclaimed if the lungs of our listeners cannot hear us distinctly but we have taken enough oxygen to keep the brain alert then distraction, lack of concentration or sleep itself will be the result if the chairs, the benches or the pews on which they sit torture their backs or their buttocks it is doubtful that their hearts will be broken rarely have I been in a place where people had aching backs and aching buttocks accompanied by broken hearts because the nonbelievers nerve endings that go from that part of the body are unusually powerful. And sore backs are a great distraction to the mind

4:13 and therefore a great impediment to having the word come home to the heart. Now that's reality. And we need constantly to remind ourselves that we are not preaching to disembodied spirits or to insensitive bodily creatures. I hope you got the lesson when in the middle of that lengthy congregational meeting a week ago Wednesday I didn't try to hide it with some pious reason.

4:41 I said you've been sitting for a long time. Some of you are probably uncomfortable. Let's stand. That's not unspiritual.

4:48 That's recognizing this principle. Secondly, we must remind ourselves that whenever the word is preached Satan will use any means at his disposal to hinder the reception of that word. We must remind ourselves that whenever the word is preached Satan will use any means at his disposal to hinder the reception of that word. And I use that particular word or name of the evil one purposefully.

5:27 Satan, as you know, means the adversary. And the parable of the sower is very clear on this point. When our Lord says, When our Lord interprets that parable He says that when the word is sown the devil is always there like birds that constantly hover around the sower who is broadcasting his seed on the open field to pluck up to their advantage any seed that is not enfolded by the earth. So wherever there is a gospel preacher there is the adversary.

6:01 And Paul says in 2 Corinthians 2.11 We are not ignorant. We are not ignorant of Satan's devices. And in the context he was taking preventive measures against Satan's devices.

6:13 Do you remember that setting? The preventive measure was exhorting the believers to confirm their love to the penitent man who had been disciplined lest he be swallowed up with discouragement. And he says, For we are not ignorant of his devices. Well, every time you enter into the pulpit remember, you are not to be ignorant of Satan's devices.

6:34 And he will do. Anything to pluck away the seed of the word from men's minds and he may often find readily at hand very effective instruments by which to do that in the physical context in which we preach. So anything we can do to neutralize those instruments we have a moral and ethical responsibility to seek to neutralize them. Then thirdly, by way of introduction let me say this.

7:04 We must, remind ourselves that in all things we are to reflect the beneficent character of our Heavenly Father. We need to remind ourselves that in all things we are to seek to reflect the beneficent character of our Heavenly Father. You remember the great standard of Matthew 5.48 Be ye therefore perfect and you shall not be as your Heavenly Father is perfect and particularly perfect in love and one aspect of the perfection of the love of our Heavenly Father is underscored in Psalm 103 verses 13 and 14 like as a father pities his children so the Lord pities them that fear him for he knows our frame he remembers that we are dust. Now if our Heavenly Father never forgets that we are physical creatures with eyes, ears, backs and buttocks and nerve endings and the need for a certain amount of oxygen to be carried by the bloodstream to the brain in order to be alert if our Heavenly Father always deals with us as one who is remembering our bodily condition

8:33 then surely we ought to be like him not only at all times but particularly when we are standing officially in his name proclaiming his word to his people. One of the grossest acts of ungodliness is for a preacher to forget that his hearers have a bodily frame and a bodily constitution and to go droning on in the midst of a stifling building when simply stopping and saying deacons please open the windows would be a wonderful matter for the whole manifestation of the character of God who remembers our frame and might preach more eloquently than all that he has purposed to say. So in the light of these perspectives I think you brethren can see the importance and the biblical roots of the subject matter for today. The person who is so spiritual as to be willfully ignorant of or stubbornly indifferent to the principles related to the actual act of preaching as it touches the physical surroundings is more spiritual than God himself.

9:47 In reality his willful ignorance or his stubborn indifference is not true spirituality but it is a rotten piosity it is a form of asceticism which the Bible labels as a doctrine of demons. Anything that demeans the legitimate existence of and demands of our physical constitution according to Paul's letter to Timothy partakes of the doctrine of demons.

10:16 That's how he labels those who say the path to spirituality is the denial of certain foods the denial of sexual relations he says that these who would treat man's physical existence and the realities growing out of it as something to be battered and mortified that's a doctrine of demons. Because it is a slap at the wisdom of the creator himself. So brethren though this lecture will have fewer exegetical materials in the actual headings I hope you see from the introduction that we are in the realm of something that is under the canopy of very broad theological concerns and perspectives. Alright, now as we take up our subject that is the act of preaching in relationship to the physical surroundings with these three words of introduction setting as it were the field of our study I have four areas of concern to address.

The Pulpit and Its Setting: Structure, Placement, and Visibility

11:21 Number one the pulpit and its setting. The pulpit and its setting. Now it is not my purpose to address the larger issue of architecture and aesthetic concerns I have done that in a tape called A Theology of Christian Architecture TE21 with that cursed trinity mentality that looks for a chapter and verse for everything. Some of us had the temerity to believe when we were considering building phase one and then subsequently phase two that surely the Bible ought to give us some principles by which to regulate our thinking about construction. And you don't construct until you design you don't design until you design you don't design until you design you don't design until you design until you design until you design without aesthetics and you shouldn't design in the aesthetics without asking yourself is there a theology of aesthetics? Is God an aesthetic God? And have the scriptures given us some principles that ought to regulate our thinking and I've attempted to bring some of those together into what I call a theology of Christian architecture which was preached to our people and that's a broader concern but we're concerned about the pulpit and its setting.

12:46 All right? So let's first of all take up the pulpit itself and when I deal with the pulpit itself then we'll deal with the setting of the pulpit. Under the pulpit itself I have three things I want to say. I want to say a word first of all about its structure.

13:08 As we think of the fact that our primary public labor is carried on behind a wooden object called a pulpit surely some serious consideration should be made about the pulpit. It should be given to the usefulness of that pulpit in aiding the effective preaching of the word. As far as I know if there is a biblical precedent for the concept of a pulpit it comes to us in Nehemiah chapter 8 in verse 4 and to my knowledge this is the first reference to anything that even remotely approximates our present concept of a pulpit and Ezra the scribe stood upon the 19-year-old pulpit Nehemiah 1 translates it a pulpit and says in the marginal reading the Hebrew is a tower of wood which they had made for the purpose well what was the purpose? that the rediscovered book of the law might be read and heard with understanding and an explanation in the midst of the assembly of the men and the women and all that could hear with understanding Nehemiah 8 and verse 2 and in conjunction with the gathering of the congregation with a view to reading and giving the sense of the word of God Ezra the scribe stood upon a tower of wood which they had made for the purpose so you see

14:37 the construction and the placement of the pulpit was governed by the purpose which was to aid and facilitate bringing the word of God into direct confrontation with the congregation of God therefore this is not something concerning which the Bible is silent or concerning which we can afford the luxury of indifference now then the structure of the pulpit itself what should we say about it? well here's how I try to express it it should be aesthetically and architecturally compatible with the rest of the building it should be aesthetically and architecturally compatible with the rest of the building it should not be a monstrosity a grotesque or jarring item since it will always be in the line of the vision of the people in preaching it ought to be something that does not distract the mind from the preaching now some of you who may have seen what we affectionately call now our old cracker box the building that we met in for several years in Essex Fells it had interior the interior design that we did had some

16:04 gothic motifs on the front wall where we built a platform and if I can put it sort of in perspective a little bit as the side walls came down this way to the platform area the side walls then the back walls went back at an angle similar to the way this present building does and as the pulpit sat was here on these side walls what we had was some imitation beams that had a curved kind of gothic motif imposed upon it and then we had these heavier dark beams so it would be something you'd call sort of a semi gothic motif and so when we bought a pulpit and communion table we got one that had a curved little arches imposed on some of the decorative trim and then the communion table that table that sits out now in the upper foyer that is really out of place architecturally had that same motif so that visually anyone looking to the front did not have something that was grotesque or so out of place that if they had any cultivated sense of aesthetics they'd be distracted as I've done before you may have such powers of concentration that your ability to receive the ministry of the word this Sunday would not be at all influenced

17:33 if I preached the whole sermon with my glasses like this you see you may have such powers of concentration and when I wanted to use my bifocals I had to go like this but most of us are so made that you would find that very distracting well in the same way there are sufficient number of people who though they could not articulate it have a cultivated sense of aesthetics that if there is an oversized medieval pulpit in a modernly designed building they just feel uncomfortable and when they're looking up at you to preach they are if not consciously they are unconsciously and subliminally distracted so my counsel to you is with regard to the pulpit and its setting the pulpit itself in its structure should be aesthetically and architecturally compatible with the rest of the building and if you don't have any sense of what fits there are lots of people who do seek some counsel you'll notice that in the very muted modern design of the upstairs building that we have tried to state something architecturally in the overall design perhaps sometime we can go over as it were what we're trying to say but it's evident that we designed the pulpit and platform furniture in such a way that it would not in any way

19:03 jar with the overall aesthetics of the building but it should not only be aesthetically and architecturally compatible as to its structure it should be functional it should be functional remember Ezra the scribe stood upon a pulpit of wood which they had made for the purpose there's function so whatever modification are necessary in height the pulpit should not hide you from your people and if God made you so that you're cut off at the knees and the pulpit in the church in which you go and not as a guest but in a permanent way was made for someone who towered over Mike Androkovich you know obviously it would be a pulpit up here well you don't want to have a pulpit that's you know you've got to sort of look up over and hope that people can see you it ought to be in its height and in its particular size compatible with your height and with your size to serve the ministry of the word so that your Bible your notes can be in such a place as they are not a distraction but an aid to the most efficient proclamation of the word possible for example that pulpit upstairs is designed the way it is in order to be functional in this particular

20:32 building oh there it is thank you as you know we have a square auditorium and the pulpit is here and we have the banks of pews laid out as we do one two three and four well I've been in many places where in sitting over here with a pulpit that looking down from the top was designed like this where I never felt even when the preacher turned to me that I had the full impact of his visual presence and even when I've seen pulpits that were like this so when I saw a pulpit that was an octagon that is eight equal planes with three of them cut off and came like this I found that when sitting over here I found I felt the visual impact of those three equal planes and when the preacher turned and looked at me I felt like the whole preacher and the whole pulpit was aimed right in me I said that's what we've got to have in that building if that's the way we're going to have it shaped so there's a rationale for the shape of the pulpit and it's not just that it fits in its overall architectural motif but in order that there would be an optimum impression made of the word of God that when you turn and face the people

22:00 in this part of the auditorium they feel indeed that everything because they can't see you apart from that pulpit that's in front of you brings forth that impression visually consciously or unconsciously that everything is being directed to them so it should be functional have a place to place books that you may occasionally want to quote from have a place where a glass of water can be put out of sight and you're not in danger of water watering the flowers and if necessary have a coat hook on the inside people laugh when they see the pulpit with its two glass holders and its coat hook that was all custom designed but it was interesting when I went down to Mebane they copied the design of our pulpit because they have a rather squarish auditorium and they caught the significance of this and thankfully they had a coat hanger so when I got hot I didn't have to take my coat off and hopefully make sure I hit the chair ten feet away as I threw it nor did I have to say excuse me and walk over I could while they were turning to a passage take my coat off and have most people wonder when did he take his coat off I didn't see him do it well those are just little things just little things but brethren again it's the little things that make the difference between something that is functional and something that is non-functional so as to its structure aesthetically architecturally compatible

23:27 with the rest of the building and secondly it should be functional with respect to your own size with respect to the shape of the auditorium and then thirdly as to its structure it should be substantial Webster's Collegiate Dictionary meaning number three under substantial says strong solid or firm not only does a substantial pulpit make an architectural statement to the eye but if the people have to hold their breath any time you raise your hand to thump it wondering uh-oh is it going to come to pieces this time then it's not substantial enough it ought to be substantial enough that if Big Mike is there and goes on a holy tear and looks like he's going to thump it everyone's everybody's comfortable that all Mike will do is come away with a bruised hand but the pulpit ain't going to suffer alright and I've bloodied my knuckles more than once on that pulpit plus the other ones solid oak or cherry pulpits don't bend beneath human flesh I assure you so it should be substantial it's not made to be a prop to invalids who cannot or will not bear their own weight on their feet you know people that hang on the pulpit like their legs were paralyzed but a rickety squeaky flimsy pulpit is not befitting a vigorous manly authoritative

24:57 preaching of the word of God so the pulpit ought to reflect the flavor of the ministry and therefore it ought to be substantial okay so that's what I want to say about its structure the pulpit itself large letter A number one its structure I've said three things now its placement with reference to this I will say but one thing it must be central in the place where the people of God gather and that's when any action is vital in a play the playwright will describe that action as taking place center front stage or front center stage you ever heard the term he was trying to up stage me the closer you get to the front of the stage the more important is the actor and his actions the more central it is the more the eye is drawn to it and the reformation literally overhauled church architecture throughout all of Europe it took the altar from its elevated central place and then the two little lecterns to the side and it put the altar into a common table

26:26 on floor level and high above it and some of those European churches I've been in you almost wonder if you need an oxygen mask there's a pulpit very high on the front wall of the church with a communion table that is down at ground level saying that sacrament stands under the word that the word is the interpreter of the sacrament and only those who bow to the word and its saving message have a right to the sacrament and it's very interesting that in the past thirty years I've seen it in my own lifetime that more and more so-called protestant churches are going to a split chancel and they have a little bigger desk to one side for preaching and a smaller reading desk but then they have a so-called communion table elevated two or three steps up on a platform and often with a brass no dying Christ on it but nonetheless a brass icon they have a brass cross and the eye is drawn immediately to the table with its icon rather than to the pulpit which says the central action in this gathering of God's people is that which takes place there at the pulpit so as to placement it ought to be in the central place and if you go into a church situation as some of you

27:55 will in a church planning ministry and you will be buying an old closed up church building if it does not have a central pulpit even if you cannot afford to reconstruct the front part of the church clear the table out of the front place and if you've got to just put a simple lectern where you preach and what you use to preach from should be central as a theological statement and some would say well isn't that pressing things a little bit too far I say no because it can be demonstrated historically that theology has determined the placement of the pulpit and where there is a demeaning of preaching in our day it's good that the concept of the church as a gathered people is coming back and you have octagonal churches now and you have square churches like ours where the congregation at least in part is looking inward toward itself but some of that has gone so berserk that you don't even have a pulpit that's elevated what you have is a little lectern that's like down in an orchestra pit and it's very significant you see the director of an orchestra has significance only in terms of keeping all this orchestrated and the preacher is no longer looked upon as a herald but an orchestrator the real action is among the people and he's just the orchestrator rather than the herald of God who comes with the message of God

29:24 in the name and in the authority of God so the placement of the pulpit is vital and then it's visibility with respect now to the pulpit itself we've said something about its structure its placement now its visibility it is possible to have a pulpit that meets the criteria of structure and placement but which is gravely deficient in the area of comfortable visibility now to meet this standard comfortable visibility two things are vital proper height and adequate lighting proper height and adequate lighting and what do I mean by proper height well most of you will minister in churches where they have a flat floor now this is a cross section looking at the side and the pews will be arranged or the seats will be arranged this way now what you need to do when determining the proper height of a pulpit is get some people sitting in the back rows when you're determining this of different heights some shorties some tall ones and some in between ones have them sit in the back row and a few other people sitting here and then get the angle at which the person of average height can be seen comfortably and the more

30:53 the auditorium is deep you see that how that angle keeps cutting backwards so that you've got to have more and more height if people are going to be seen adequately if you only have three rows then you see you've got to cover the angle from here and you've got to this is a vital issue in terms of of being able to be visible and you're going to have to do some experimentation and maybe some of you will go into a situation where the first thing you'll do is to do a little construction work to add a foot to the height of the platform on which you're preaching it was one of the real problems we had with phase one a whole section eighteen inches higher has been taken off that platform when we originally built it and then we did this experiment we found that if we got more than two thirds full people were just not able to see the person of average height in the pulpit and so even though it meant until we got the hair conditioning it was rough that first summer trying to breathe with your head just about three feet from the ceiling in there we felt it was far more vital that people could see the preacher's face and see the upper part of his body as he was preaching so be careful about the proper height and then the second matter and I don't understand how so many churches are just duds on this matter adequate lighting not just a nice little light that lights up the preacher's notes

32:21 but we've talked about how the preacher's whole person preaches the look of delight in his eye and the look of pathos in his eye and all that is conveyed by the face in preaching so the light ought to make the preacher's face the light and the general pulpit area clearly visible and the light ought to be adequate that the people can follow in their Bibles and the preacher can see their countenances now if there's one aspect that I could change in our new building it's that aspect because when you're standing in the pulpit and you have those windows along the side and the back when the light from those things is coming in the eyeball just like your camera follows the pattern of the eye an automatic camera will read that lightest part and shut the lens down and the iris shuts down and it's difficult to discern the actual faces from about halfway back particularly on those side sections where you've got those outside windows and some of you have perhaps noticed that if you've stood in that pulpit and I'm not sure how we can rectify that without over lighting the interior auditorium it's just something that in midst all the things we try to do and try to plan on that's one that we just messed up on but it's vital if we're going to remember the principles

33:49 of this mutual empathetic interaction that you're able to have enough light upon the faces of your people to read their faces and that there ought to be much more sufficient light a much more intense light upon yours so that everyone can read your face as well so this is vital with regard to the pulpit not only its placement but also but its visibility proper height and adequate lighting alright so much then for the pulpit itself now just a word about the setting of the pulpit alright said we'd talk about the pulpit itself now about the setting of the pulpit that is in relationship to the rest of the building it should be a setting that allows for easy and safe accessibility and secondly adequate and unrestricted mobility alright let me just say a word about those two things now we're looking down like you see on the floor plans of an architectural drawing let's say this is your platform I have a piano over here now with regard to this matter of the placement of the pulpit what I'm suggesting is it ought to be placed in such a way as to allow for safe

35:17 accessibility the pulpit should be such that if people are sitting here in order to come up and preach or if they're sitting down here that they can have access to the pulpit without stumbling over microphone wires stumbling over some other misplaced parts of poor architectural design it's a horrible thing for people to keep from giggling if the preacher on his way to deliver the message of God looks like he's going to fall flat on his face before he opens his mouth but not fall flat on his face metaphorically but literally and I've been in some situations where I almost had to tiptoe over an object course to get to the pulpit there were speaker wires here and speakers there just ludicrous just showing no sense of the fact that these kinds of distractions can turn away the minds of God's people from the word of God so seek to be careful in designing the placement of the pulpit or making corrections in a building that you're going to renovate that there will be safe accessibility don't have it so close to a flight of stairs this is sort of anticipating the next thing so I better maybe say it that is adequate

36:46 and unrestricted mobility for example I've seen some pulpits designed in such a way that here's the pulpit and it was on a little platform sitting on top of a platform and you had a stair to go up in there but you were always there was no way to let you know when you were stepping back how far you were and it was a terrible thing to feel that you might be just about three inches from the ludicrous position of legs straight up in the air going backwards and make sure that you don't have any anything like that and if the only way you can have adequate visibility height wise is to build a platform on the platform then at least have a modest railing that will not impede visual things but will at least give someone a sphere of reference so that when they step backwards they can feel the railing by them and I have these are not things I'm concocting brethren I have been in situations like this alas more than once and most of this is wrung out of the bitter experience and I remember one pulpit in a very old church in the UK that whether they were just trying to preserve the motif or what but I'm not I'm not exaggerating when I tell you that the pulpit itself was no bigger than this lectern and it was enclosed in a box that was about this big and you had a little door that you had to go in and I could barely get in this way and then a

38:15 flat piece of what would now be considered finished two by ten on the back wall and that's what you had to sit on during the service and then when you got up to preach take a half a step backwards that thing cut into the back of your legs take a step this way and you hit the gate going out and take I mean I just felt like someone was tethering me and it was horrible to preach with liberty of soul cooped up in that little box and I mean I was sorely tempted with you know with my ten and a half I mean eleven and a half wing tips they weigh three and a half pounds together I don't know so split that in half what's that a pound and three quarters each I mean I was tempted to just raise up a foot and boom boom and then put my foot on that back thing and the rest and say now I feel like I've got a little liberty and I can preach but I was afraid I'd have got in big bad trouble the stuff probably went back to the 18th century so make sure that there's adequate and unreserved and unreserved restricted mobility in the setting of the pulpit okay so much then for the pulpit under this first heading the pulpit and its setting now we're going to talk about the seats and their arrangements remember I told you we're going to deal with four things the first was the pulpit and its setting now the seats and their arrangement and here I have four things to keep in mind

The Seats and Their Arrangement: Comfort, Visual Access, and Distraction Avoidance

39:44 as far as the seats and their arrangement number one aim at optimum physical comfort aim at optimum physical comfort here we come back to our introductory principle our father knows our frame if people are physically uncomfortable because of the kind of chairs or benches or pews they are sitting on you will be undermining the efficiency of your preaching ministry before you buy chairs if you're going to use chairs test them why did we end up with these particular chairs in phase one well what we did is for a period of a month to six weeks we got three basic good substantial chairs we put no price tags on them we didn't tell people what the cost was and when we were still meeting in the junior high auditorium we had them sitting outside or just as you came outside the two sets of doors in that auditorium and the elders that would be standing there would ask the people would you sit down and try the chairs over a period of weeks and we took particular notice of the people that we knew had chronic back problems or who had undergone back surgery then we deliberately had some of the kids sit there whose feet don't hit the bottom and it's rough being a little kid and having

41:13 whatever is there cutting in the back of your legs you know and your feet don't hit the bottom and they're just hanging free so we had a cross section and then we did a straw pole I'm not mentioning price but what chair was most generally comfortable to the cross section of our people well we were thankful the cheapest one ended up getting first choice and that was the cheapest of the three kinds of chairs but we deliberately did that why because we realized for at least at the time we thought maybe five or six years it was a much shorter time many many hours would be spent sitting in those chairs to hear the word of God and we wanted people to to be able to hear at optimum physical comfort. If you have pews in an existing building that you go into and they have no padding, there are companies that at a relatively reasonable cost will come in and will custom make pads for your pews. Now people say, well, we need to endure hardness as good soldiers. Yes, that's right. But there's a better place to do it than when trying to listen to sermons.

42:19 Lots of other places where people can learn hardness. Well, you say we're soft people. Well, that's right. But if we're brought up sitting on cushions at home, nobody that I know of sits on hard benches every place at home.

42:33 You may have wooden chairs, but at least they're scooped out so that your buns sit in them and feel comfortable in them. They're not flat across like pews. I think whoever designed most wooden pews must have designed torture chambers. Some of the most uncomfortable things.

42:52 So if you have pews, there are companies that can add the seat padding. If you're going to purchase pews, don't skimp on comfort.

43:02 We probably spent more time wrestling with the matter of what kind of pews we were going to get for that auditorium than any other item. And we were going to be satisfied with nothing less than the most comfortable pew that we could buy with a good conscience. And if you get down to hard nose negation, negotiating, give us a call and we'll loan Mr. Barker to you.

43:22 It takes a salesman to handle one. We ended up getting solid cherry pews. There's not a bit of particle board. Even the wood that is under the foam padding is three-quarter inch or five-quarter pine.

43:34 There isn't an ounce of particle board. And the main construction is laminated solid cherry. There's no veneer. I mean, that's the real stuff, those things.

43:45 And we got them for just, I think, about $5,000 to $7,000 more than another pew company was trying to sell us particle board with oak veneer. And they had a salesman. It was ludicrous. I think, yeah, I can squeeze this in.

44:00 That he obviously never turned a screw into a piece of wood all his life. He just oozed salesman and that's all. And he had the temerity to try and tell some of us who know a little something about construction, plus a couple of our men who know more than a little. Jake Vanderwill, who is an accomplished, uh, carpenter, that screws would actually remain more firmly fixed in particle board with veneer than with hardwood.

44:31 I mean, once the guy tried, I mean, it took all we could to just say, hey, buddy, you've blown it. Now, you might as well not even waste the rest of your night. You've just blown it with this bunch of men with that kind of a ludicrous statement. But don't skimp on the pews.

44:47 You can skimp on a lot of things. But remember, with our view of the centrality of worship and preaching, let's show that we have the heart of God, that we know our people's frames, and we want them to have as much comfort as possible. The mind won't receive more than the seat can endure. Okay?

45:07 So aim at optimum physical comfort when it comes to the seating. Second thing under the matter of the seats and their arrangement, secure, optimum visual access to the pulpit.

45:21 Secure, optimum visual access to the pulpit. If you ask the question, why have we arranged our auditorium in the square? Well, it's because we took a tape and we figured out if we place a pulpit on this wall, how far would people be on the back row? If we do it this way, how far will they be, allowing that we will cut the, the pews off this way by having our doors here?

45:50 And we found out by this configuration, if the building were full, 850 people filling up all the pews, no one would be further than 65 feet from the pulpit. So there would be optimum visual access to the pulpit. Then we had to ask the question, all right, if that's so, then what price are we paying for that? Are we going to pay the price of distraction?

46:15 Because if to get this, we have, we have people seeing every distraction over here, because in peripheral vision they will see it. Is that worth that? So we had to trade off these various factors, but we were concerned that there be optimum visual access to the pulpit in the light of our view, that it's the whole man that preaches and that the word is communicated through the whole man. We didn't want people who had to bring opera glasses in order to see the preacher they were listening to.

46:47 Now, if you're setting up chairs, as we had to do in this auditorium by optimum visual access, what you may have to do is what they do in theaters, and that is to have the seats staggered so that you are not looking directly at the back of someone's head. Now you'll notice upstairs that the platform and the pulpit are not dead center. We have that,

47:19 uh, uh, exit and stairwell going out here. And what we did is we found that the center line of the building is here. Well, if you were to look up, aesthetically, the pulpit ought to be, and platform ought to have been centered there. So there'd be equidistance the rest of the way back, and then of course you have this offsetting matter back here.

47:44 But we said, no, if we do that, we're going to have a problem with having chair lines staggered in this alternate arrangement. So we said, why don't we do this? Let's split the distance between here and here and center the platform in terms of this space and then have nine chairs here and 11 here. And by that arrangement, we can still have even rows of chairs, but the angle will be such that it will have the same effect as staggering the chairs.

48:18 And so we actually then would stand and any given, point and look from there up to the pulpit and have people sit. And sure enough, in most cases, you're not having to look right at someone's head, but there is a natural angle that puts you looking between the shoulders. Now that didn't just happen. Brethren, we spent some hours calculating that.

48:38 Why? Because our view of preaching is such that we believe there ought to be optimum visual access to the pulpit between the people and the preacher and the preacher. And, the people all right. And then thirdly, aim at app optimum avoidance of visual distractions.

49:01 Aim at optimum avoidance of physical distractions in the placement of your pews and of your chairs. Now, here again and give you a testimony when we were trying to figure out where to place the chairs in phase one here, we have a building 50 by a hundred. This is more proportionate. It's more like this.

49:25 It's a little more to scale. We said, all right, here's a good opportunity to have a sense of the gathered church. So let's put a platform over here and then let's arrange the chairs in banks, sort of like this and something like this. And then of course, here was the entrance door here and here's the kitchen.

49:53 This is back here. So what we did is we actually set up some, uh, some old soda boxes and put some chairs and then we had people come in these doors. These were the only entrance doors. And when we did, we saw immediately everyone in here immediately someone coming in late.

50:12 They couldn't help but turn to see them getting people seated. It was just too distracting. So we tried other configurations. Then we finally said, no, given the fact that we have only those two doors as main entrance and egress, people will not be coming in.

50:29 Here. As a general rule, excuse me, we're going to have to go to the long funnel effect that we did choose. And then we said, now that being, so how are we going to offset the problem of people looking at people's heads? And that's when we came up with this matter.

50:44 But we experimented and worked on this matter, concerned that in trying to get the concept of a gathered church and good visibility, we did not then leave ourselves unnecessarily vulnerable to visual distractions. So think through that issue. It's late. People come in late.

51:03 How can the chairs and the pews be arranged that there is a minimum of visual distraction and let that determine where you place the seats and how you arrange them. And then of course there needs to be fourthly securing the optimum use of space in terms of need the optimum use of space in terms of need. And this is, this is where you may again have to trade off certain things in the new building. They have down in Mebane, they have basically a square building and they have a platform that's arranged to sort of like this and then they have a baptistry back in here and they have stairs coming up under the platform, a communion table here and then their pulpit there and the way things are with their chairs and they have those locking devices. They have a very nice arrangement whereby they have, I think it's three major banks of chairs and under their present situation with a congregation of maybe 200 on the Lord's Day, 175, they can allow the luxury of maybe, that probably the chairs. Don't go back.

52:21 They had the extra when set up for the special meetings, but under their present circumstances, they're allowing much more space out here even though they have a good size into the neighborhood, ator, have double doors going out here and here, and have a good-sized foyer and then two rows of classrooms going down that way. Well, in terms of their present need, they've arranged their chairs so that they're comfortably filled with the present size of their congregation, allowing a lot more space for interaction here and on the sides for now. But now as the congregation grows, they're going to have to trade off some of that and be flexible. So in those matters, brethren, again, just use some good horse sense.

Acoustics and Voice Assistance: Comfortable Audibility

53:02 But I never had anyone tell me these things, and when we were going through them, and that's why I'm thankful we've been down that road, I was determined that hopefully if the Lord ever gave me the opportunity of passing these things on, we'd be able to do so out of the matrix of our own experience in wrestling with the principles. All right, now let's move from the pulpit to the seats to the acoustics and voice assistance where needed. All right, we've dealt with the pulpit and its setting, the seats and their arrangement, the acoustics, and voice assistance where needed.

53:45 Now you ought to have as your goal an audio-acoustical situation which allows for the full range of your voice being heard with, here's the key phrase, comfortable audibility. Comfortable audibility.

54:05 Now, too much voice and too little, are both uncomfortable and irritating. Too much usually is uncomfortable, too little, irritating.

54:18 I know a few things more frustrating than to come with a hungry heart and a prepared heart to hear the word of God and not be able to hear the preacher. I can get in a carnal frame so quick it isn't funny. I can get so irritated. Now, I may be unusually perverse, but I don't think so.

54:37 You come, you've prepared your heart, you've come eager to hear, and you're missing words. Well, there's no excuse for that. And also, if the preacher thunders at me like I had a 90% hearing loss in both ears and goes at me 10, 15, 20, 30 minutes, then I find that very uncomfortable. Not so much irritating as uncomfortable.

55:02 And I want to just tell him, Sir, someone may have misinformed you. The congregation did not all have a bomb go off in their ear and have 90% hearing loss. Just go easy on our eardrums. God made them in such a way that when all those decibels comes, it hurts.

55:19 Please be like God. He knows my frame. You obviously, if you know it, have forgotten what it's like to have somebody bellowing in your ear.

55:28 And you just want to stand up and say, please be like God. God would never bellow in my ear till it hurts. Even when the trump of God sounds in the voice of the archangel, it's going to be one blast, one blast of a trump, I think. I doubt God's going to deafen his creatures so they can't hear his sentence when they stand before him in judgment.

55:50 So, I would urge you in this matter, even as I alluded in the lecture on the voice, to use no voice assistance until your congregation grows to well over 200 or 300 people.

56:04 You will learn to sustain voice support. You will have a broader range of the use of your voice without a microphone when you do raise your voice to a high pitch and to an intense pitch being uncomfortable. And then you won't get in the bad habit of trailing off and hoping the mic will cover your deficiency. It's a lovely thing with that auditorium down there in Mebane.

56:32 There's no voice assistance and talking in the tone of voice that I'm talking to you now, you can be heard distinctly on the last row. It was a delight to preach in that kind of a situation. Because then, you could even lean over the pulpit and roar when you felt a roar coming on and not have to back off because you're afraid you're going to blow the diaphragm on the mic or blow people's eardrums if you didn't blow the diaphragm. I mean, in many ways, the microphone's a pain in the neck.

56:59 And even the clip-on ones with a compressor because when you're caught up, some of us who are more demonstrative, we've had the horrible embarrassment of preaching on the publican. Beating upon his breast and the next thing we know, we were banging the life out of a clip-on microphone. That's very, very embarrassing. I've had it happen.

57:24 I mean, you know, you're caught up in the truth and you're preaching and you're not thinking about this thing clipped on here and it says he beat upon his breast and all of a sudden, it's terrible.

57:39 All right. Now, what will this mean at the practical level if you're trying in the acoustics to have comfortable audibility? Well, it will mean in an existing building, you may have to add or subtract some sound-absorbent materials.

58:00 I can remember the first time Trinity Church met. We called ourselves Calvary Fellowship. We had to have a name to put on the checking account for the first week. We met in the women's club of Caldwell.

58:11 Hard work. Hardwood floors.

58:14 Plaster walls. Plaster ceiling. Not a sound-absorbent item in that whole place, but the clothing the people wore. Well, when 65 of us met on that first Lord's Day and sang, I tell you, it was thrilling.

58:29 I mean, it sounded like 765. But when I tried to preach, the echo was such that all my words were piggybacking. So I had deliberately to slow down, my speech to about this space to make sure that none of the words were piggybacking one on top of the other. Now, you can imagine what it was like to attempt to do that and still to sound natural.

59:00 I mean, everything in me just... But there was a case if that had been a building we had purchased, we would have immediately put some drapes up.

59:09 We would have perhaps put some carpeting down. We would have experienced to get that balance of comfortable audibility. Now, you may go into some buildings. They were made so that sound would not be gathered and transferred.

59:25 And they may have a lot of sound absorbent material on the walls, on the floor, acoustical tile on the ceiling. And when you stand to sing, you feel like you're singing a solo. There's no sense of community. And when you preach, I mean, even when you roar, why, there's no sense.

59:42 That the full voice is being let out because it's all getting absorbed. So, seek to be sensitive to those things. And if you don't have any understanding in those areas, the investment of a few hundred or a few thousand dollars for some professional acoustical advice will be well worth it. Remember, we believe that all that is significant in our corporate life goes on in the gathering of God's people.

60:08 And we don't want the singing to be dull. Or at the expense of having the singing exhilarating in the sense of singing with one voice, we don't want the preaching to be indistinct because there's too much sound bouncing from wall to wall. So, in these matters, in an existing building, you may have to add or subtract sound absorbent materials. In constructing a building, if and when the time comes for you to construct a building, please seek counsel from those who've gone before you because you must have a mixture of these two elements.

60:48 A good mix of sound absorbent and sound reflecting materials. Without a professional acoustical engineer among us, you should have seen us trying to figure out how this mix would work out in the present Phase II building. Having sound absorbent material on the floor, the carpets, sound absorbent material on the pews, with the padded pews with their cloth covering, and yet tremendously sound reflective surfaces with that wood ceiling, and yet knowing that every one of those beams acts like a baffle that breaks up. Sound waves are just like bullets off a hard surface. They come off at exactly the angle at which they attack the surface. So every one of those main beams, you see, is a baffle. And when sound is reflected off here and catches there, then it may be directed back downward this way.

61:49 But since there's only that much surface to do it, they act like baffles. And trying to figure out just how all that was going to work out was a real difficulty. And that's another area. If there's a thing we could go back and redo over again, it would be in the area of trying to have a bit more acoustically alive building.

62:10 Because the singing is a little bit, because the singing is a little bit, because the singing is a little bit, because the singing is a little bit, because the singing is a little bit, because the singing is a little bit, on the overly absorbent side. You notice the difference. You have maybe 200, 300 fewer people in here singing the opening hymn Sunday morning, but you have a real sense that these voices are mingling. And then you go with two or three, 400 more people in that other auditorium, and you don't have quite the same sense.

62:33 And whether there's something we can do down the line to improve that, I don't know. We are, we've made steps to improve the very inadequate voice assist system in that building. We've got a proposal from a sound engineer. It may cost us $13,000, but we believe it's going to be worth it.

62:54 And we're in the process of working towards that. So when it comes time then for this matter of voice assistance, you may want to contact a sound engineer who knows the difference between a mere PA system and a voice assistance concept. You see, in a PA system, all you're concerned about is everyone hears the announcement. Is there a doctor in the house?

63:18 So-and-so scored the goal at 1433 of the fourth period. You're not concerned whether it accurately reflects all the nuances and the tones and the color of the voice of the preacher, but in a sound assist system, it should be such that the voice that you hear when talking to the man like this is what you hear 65 feet away by means of the cones or the speakers, and that there's no fundamental difference between the two. And that's not an easy thing. All right?

Ventilation and Temperature Control: Honoring God's Design

63:52 Then I'll close by saying a word about ventilation and temperature control of the place where you meet. Ventilation and temperature control of the place where you meet and where you preach. That's the fourth matter pertaining to the general physical context in which you are preaching. We've dealt with pulpit, sound, seats.

64:17 We've dealt with sound. Now, the ventilation and temperature control of the place where you preach. When people gather in a closed room, each person becomes an oxygen consumer, a humidifier, and a radiant heater. Now, that's reality.

64:35 Each person is an oxygen consumer. He's a humidifier, both his body and his mouth. If you want to have a little fun sometime, take a little...

64:44 We have one of these things that has both temperature and humidity on it. Breathe into it. Not only will you see the temperature thing go up, but you'll see the humidity. If you have internal relative humidity of 40, 45 percent, you see that humidity thing go .

64:58 That's why when you breathe on your glasses, moisture condenses on them. Well, with that being so, you've got an optimum situation for the brain being oxygen starved, for people being uncomfortable with a higher level of humidity, and it will make you less efficient as a preacher, and it will make your listeners less efficient as receivers of the Word of God. So if heat and humidity are excessive, concentration is a labor. You've heard so many people say, I can take the heat, but the humidity kills me.

65:38 So my practical counsel is, one, do something concrete to secure adequate ventilation and movement available. Do something to secure adequate ventilation and movement of air. Overhead fans are the in thing now. I'm glad we've come back to it.

66:01 It's amazing how we've come around full circle. I remember long before air conditioners were in vogue, all of the stores in town had the big old overhead fans, such as now you can buy everywhere and you find in homes. It gives a movement of air. You may want to have an exhaust fan installed with an air intake louver so that there's an exchange of air, and that's not necessarily expensive, but make sure it's done in such a way that it's not audibly distracting.

66:31 I've gone into church buildings where they did a good job to have a complete movement of air every three minutes, but it took everything you had as a preacher to keep attention for three minutes, because the fans are and then the louvers were rattling, and it just didn't show good sense. I don't know. And so in these matters, don't allow someone to come in and say, well, look, we can give you this fan with this set of louvers, and it'll so many cubic feet per minute. That means you ask, yes, fine, good.

67:04 But is it going to be placed in such a way that it will not be audibly distracting? So you must be concerned. You read Spurgeon, page 129 and 130 in his lectures to his students. That's where he tells that humorous incident of the church.

67:19 You remember where he said, somebody broke a window and he wouldn't tell who the culprit was and the rest. It was obviously a tongue in cheek where Spurgeon himself did. The windows couldn't be opened and he got tired of preaching to dopey people. So during the week he took his cane and broke out some of the windows.

67:37 So there'd be some ventilation. It's a very humorous incident. Lectures to my students, page 129 and 130. Don't have time to read it.

67:45 And then appoint one of the deacons to watch the temperature on the thermostat. And if it gets up, it's over. If it gets up too high and you need to open the windows or turn on the exhaust fans, have a deacon who is concerned to monitor those matters. And then in the matter of temperature control, in many places I'm personally convinced that air conditioning is no more a luxury than heat in the winter.

68:11 If God likens himself to a shade from the burning sun, a place of refuge and refreshment, what's wrong for the place of his special presence being like him? You see? God likens himself to a place of refuge, a shade from the burning sun, indicating that God is conscious under that imagery of the discomfort that comes from excessive heat. In the winter, keep the thermostat several degrees lower than your family dwelling for two reasons.

68:42 The bodies of all those people will quickly raise it if it's at all well insulated. And secondly, your people will keep more alert. Lecture to my students. The temperature of the air conditioning system is so tight that in the wintertime, when it would be brought up to say 68 degrees and we were meeting there from 9.30 in the morning till one o'clock or quarter to one, whatever it was, the temperature, the heater and circulator would be kicked off. No heat was coming in from the heating system, but we'd come in at 68 and by the time we leave at quarter to one, many times it was up close to 80. Lecture to my students. The temperature of the air conditioning system is so tight that it each one of these humans on Earth would kick off and that's the first that would happen with the application of temperature.

69:39 Cont нами погнали. The temperature of the air conditioning system falls on its own. Whatever your top here? There it is.

69:54 sense of his relationship to God is the apex of the spiritual dimension of preaching we've now concluded with this intensely practical and remember it's one in the same God who is created all of these realities and we want to honor him in all of them and may God give to you men the highest biblical piety joined to the most intense practical sense in these matters I wouldn't have you have one without the other because we need both if we are to be effective in our preaching as surely as exegesis and homiletics all work in sermon construction dependence upon God prayer and preparation so a proper consideration of pulpits, pews, acoustics and ventilation must be considered if we are by God's grace to preach effectively to our people