Busting at the Seams (Part 1)

If you came to MPLC after 1997, you might not realize that today’s church didn’t always look the way it does now. The original church building's footprint was a perfect circle, with no narthex/atrium extension and no lower-level education wing. These were added in 1996-1997 through a major expansion project. Instead, the “front” of the building for the first twenty-two years looked much like the 16th Street entrance does today.

Artist's rendering, original church entrance (1975)

The original Fellowship Hall was smaller, too, and symmetrical in shape. Back then, if you entered the church building and took the down ramp to the right, coming into the Fellowship Hall you could take an immediate right again into a hallway with doors to a couple Sunday School classrooms and a tiny nursery (currently used as the Open Table storage room). The kitchen was half its current size, leaving space for more Sunday School rooms off the Fellowship Hall. The Lounge (the room we now call “Mygatts”) included closets for kitchen storage, choir rooms, and choir music. That was also where the choir assembled and practiced before worship.

Floor plan image from Dedication Program (Nov. 9, 1975)

But even with those crowded Fellowship Hall-level classrooms, space was at a premium. As the years passed, some Sunday School classes met in the sanctuary gallery (outer ring, which had folding chairs on plywood floors instead of pews until 1990). Some met in little rooms now used for storage. Some met in the entryway spaces at each of the three exterior doors, sitting on folding chairs. As it grew, God was leading MPLC to reconsider its use of space, and dig deeper to expand its footprint . . . underground! (Read Part II next week!)