Tales from the Cafetorium, Part 1

Main Entry: caf·e·to·ri·um
Pronunciation: -ˈtȯr-ē-əm
Function: noun
Etymology: blend of cafeteria and auditorium
Date: 1952
“a large room (as in a school building) designed for use both as a cafeteria and an auditorium”

-Merriam Webster’s dictionary

Our church plant meets in a cafetorium.  It’s a cafeteria housing food fights and pubescent gossip hour by day, an auditorium for middle school orchestras by night.  And our worship space on Sundays.

When I started out on my liturgical journey I often thought about what it would be like to worship in a sacred space that is both beautifully made and purposeful.  I never felt like rejoicing much in the evangelical churches with four white walls I had been in for several years.  Then again, I don’t feel like worship much in a place that is so beautiful and ornate there is a sense of “do not touch” on the grounds.  There has to be a median between prim and pragmatic.

Such aesthetic discussions are jettisoned when you meet in a cafetorium.  It reeks of institutionalization, with numbers on the wall for table setup, a gigantic dividing wall, and not so comfy chairs (the older members of our church have been known to bring their own cushions!).  There’s even an emergency eye wash station (that we do not use as a baptistery even though that would be pretty cool).

Whenever I imagined myself reading prayers or serving communion I always had a regal, high church sense about it.  I never expected to participate in such holy acts of worship within the confines of architectural purgatory known as school design.  Schools are rarely beautiful, and if so, the beauty is a facade for an architecture that is used to control the actions of students. Not much beauty in that.

Yet it is the space in which we pray, sing, listen, sit silently, take communion in and give tithes in.  It is our space, and we do the best to redeem it.  In a sense we truly create a sacred space because we are worshiping in a place that has been purposefully stripped of all sacramental value in order to be a utilitarian structure void of artistic value.  Yet in the void, there is a community of worship.  There in the void is God.