Dear Editor,
Last night we approved the design plans for our new Church. After meeting once every two weeks for over a year the NCC or New Church Committee was delighted to see the architectural renderings of the new design. Ever since our Church burned down and we have been holding our religious services in the Unity Grange Hall we are all looking forward to being in our new home.
The vote was unanimous. I kept the NCC small so that we could be efficient. It consists of five people: me as Chairman, my husband Dr. William A. DoGood as Vice Chair, Ms. Helen Baxter as Secretary, Mr. Findlay Lyman Rogers, Esq. the Church’s attorney and Mr. Barney Sellman AIA architect.
When I became Senior Pastor of the Church, I took over the Church building that my father-in-law built. The Reverend Mr. Silas Patriot DoGood founded The First Church of God’s Love and the building structured his philosophy. He believed that the Church was a place to enter to be away from the world. One brought one’s life into a private space. It was dimly lit with only diffused light coming through the windows.
I wanted clear glass in my Church. I wanted the cleansing, forgiving and nurturing sunlight from the outside world to enter my Church and I wanted my congregation’s goodness to pass through the glass walls out into the world. So when Barney Sellman recommended a design based upon the Mildred B. Cooper Chapel in Bella Vista, AK I enthusiastically approved. But Helen Baxter and Findlay Rogers strongly disapproved.
The Cooper Chapel is designed with vertical gothic arches made from thirty one tons of steel with over four thousand feet of glass in between. Upon entering the Chapel one is struck with the breathtaking architecture of man while viewing the brilliance of the surrounding landscape. The site for our new Church has views of open fields, our valley, cow pastures and several ponds.
Helen and Findlay thought that the Chapel was too bright. They wanted a Church that allowed them to be introspective. For them candle light, low wattage and diffused light made it easier to be spiritual. We were at a standstill.
I was expressing my disappointment to my best friend Alice Bright Light as we were having after dinner drinks in our favorite booth at the River Creek Inn. As we drank our Green Chartreuse I told her my dilemma.
She said: “Why don’t you also build a round house next to the chapel? There are no windows in it and you can build it with one skylight in the middle of the domed roof. That’s where Native Americans had an opening for the smoke to escape from the fire below?”
Alice is a full blooded Chippewa Indian from a reservation in North Dakota and is used to Native American architecture. She once saw a sixty-foot wide round house on a reservation used for all social gatherings.
That idea was approved by the NCC including Helen and Findlay.
The renderings that we approved last night showed our new Church with a double wide front door. This opens into a large vestibule from which congregants can decide to either enter the steel and glass chapel or the round house. Mediation will be allowed in both when services are not being held. All services will be held in the glass chapel but all of our social gatherings including those after service will be in the round house.
You will recall that before our Church burned down we used to have all of our social gatherings in the “Great Hall” which is what my father-in-law called the old Church’s basement.
In my Sunday sermons I often speak of having faith and hope. I was put to the test of my own words when our Church burned down. But through the kindness and strength of my family and you my congregation I am renewed in my own testament. Believing is sometimes very difficult. Now it is time for thanks.
Amen.
The Reverend Mrs. Silence DoGood
Senior Pastor
Executive Director
President
Chairman
Choir Master (part-time)
The First Church of God’s Love
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