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The Rural Studio spent years designing and building contemporary, practical solutions for the local community in Alabama, having architecture students design and construct projects as one-year thesis studies.

Antioch Baptist Church approached Rural Studio. When its leaders came to dream about their new building, says architect Jared Fulton, "The congregation didn't want any old church … these people said over and over that they wanted the Cadillac of churches!"

Fulton was one of four students on this project, and he made a new building for Antioch Baptist his thesis. Many in the black, rural congregation were skeptical that a few students would be capable of demolishing, designing, and constructing their church building within one year.

The Rural Studio's plan called for the existing building to be carefully disassembled so that approximately 80 percent of the materials could be reused for the new structure. The church raised about $10,000. The Rural Studio donated the most expensive components of the building process, design fees, and labor.

The final plan alluded to Cadillacs, but incorporated a spiritual metaphor much more strongly: Antioch Baptist's concrete walls, which represent death, flank the church cemetery. As members emerge from the concrete baptistery, they cross over the threshold into a sanctuary clad in wood, which represents life.

Our Lady of Pity Church was designed by Charles Greco and dedicated in 1923 as a French Catholic church in Cambridge. It operated until the late '90s, when the Archdiocese of Boston closed it due to financial hardship.

The building now has a new life as the home of a Vineyard church. The Greater Boston Vineyard is one of a number of new Protestant congregations that have re-inhabited and renewed discarded Catholic buildings.

When church leaders bought the building, they knew there was a problem. Lead pastor Dave Schmeltzer says that while the church's aesthetics did not conflict with the Vineyard's mission, its building plan did. The doors of the original church's sanctuary opened directly outside. "You went to service," Schmeltzer says, "and when service was over, it shooed you away, out to the street."

To alleviate this problem, the Vineyard hired CBT Architects in Boston. Although CBT typically does large-scale corporate work, two of its employees, Glenn Knowles and Chris Brown, were active in the Vineyard congregation and local church community.

The architects flipped the church's orientation 180 degrees: The new entrance is where the old sanctuary's sacristy and preparation space once were. The entry now leads into a lobby with a soaring and ornate dome, which was once the apse. A large glass wall where the altar had been now separates the lobby from the sanctuary.

Although the building's glass wall is elegant, the most striking additions to the building are the acoustic clouds suspended from the ceiling. Whereas the previous congregation had only organ and vocals, the Vineyard uses multimedia projection, video, and performance-style worship music.

Gary Wang is a senior designer at Machado and Silvetti in Boston. His work can be seen at WangArchitects.com.

Copyright © 2009 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

This article was published today with "Keeping Holy Ground Holy."

Our sister publication Your Church offers several articles on architecture, including:

The Master's Plan | Laying the groundwork for God's vision of your ministry space. (May/June 2008)

iChurch | What if Steve Jobs designed your next ministry space? (May/June 2008)

Your Building Code | Currently accepted ideas about design and construction are not always best for growing churches. (March/April 2007)

Our sister blog BuildingforMinistry.com offers more posts on architecture.

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May 2009, Vol. 53, No. 5, Page 33