Sometimes I see images of churches like this, especially in countries considered “Eastern”:
Are these as small as they looK? If they are, why are they?
Presumably they are large enough for their purpose. They may not serve a parish, or they may serve a parish with a very small population. (The one you illustrate seems to be in a faiirly sparsely-developed area.) They may have been private chapels at one time, or have been constructed to serve a small monastic community, or they may be shrines erected to mark a particular location or to hold a particular relic.
Hm, I must say that I don’t find it to look very small at all. In fact, many that I have seen in various countries, both new and old aren’t much bigger than that.
What do you consider to be a “normal” size?
You want a small church? Check out the wayside chapel on Highway 620 east of Apsley, Ontario.
No, they’re larger on the inside.
That’s weird. I went to a wedding in southwestern Ontario in the early 1980s and the chapel looked exactly like that; I mean EXACTLY. I can’t remember the location but it was in the London to Sarnia neighbourhood.
That looks similar to the church my sister was married in. I’m not sure how many people fit in there but I’d guess fewer than 20 (including the 5 people standing up front).
I had to stand just outside the door and peer in.
This place was somewhere in Cape Cod. I don’t remember exactly what town.
I drive close to there on the way to the cottage. I’ll have to check it out!
That church isn’t all that small. Once you get out of the large cities and suburbs churches tend to be a lot more compact.
I grew up in Louisiana which has a very large Catholic population but the general area of my small town surrounded only by tiny towns only had a few practicing Catholics. They only had a circuit priest who came by once a month and the church was literally the size of a utility shed on a movable trailer. All of the churches so far seem like castles compared to that one.
I looked round Eastern Orthodox churches in Estonia & Lithuania in the mid-90s, I have vague memories of chancing upon a service a couple of times - here’s the thing, no chairs or pews, people stood through the ceremony.
Furniture takes up a LOT of space, people standing take up less space than people seated. Churches can be smaller.
That’s a nine-seater. It’s almost as big as an SUV.
It’s practically cavernous compared to this 51" x 81" baby. If the Church made cars, this would be it’s two-seater sports model.
There are plenty of churches near where I live (Peloponnese, Greece) that are little more than a metre square inside. They were probably built by a single family as a sign of devotion, and only have a service once a year (on their saint’s day).
Even weirder - I tried a 2 week demo of World of Warcraft last year and I had to bring someone’s skull to a chapel that looked exactly like that; I mean EXACTLY. I can`t remember the location but it was in a magical fantasy world with ghosts who needed their skulls delivered to chapels.
First Reformed Church of Gallifrey?
And that’s the reason for the really, really small churches. They were either built as a shrine to commemorate something or they’re little places built for a single family.
In some parts of the Meditterranean (I’m thinking of Greece in particular) there are processions that go round to all the little churches and shrines on particular holy days. However I agree with other posters who have said that one doesn’t look particularly small for a rural community.
Looks about the right size for a missile silo to me . . . :dubious:
It’s a church. There is room enough to worship inside. For the record, the pictured church is an Armenian one - Armenian Apostolic Church. For those that mentioned they’ve seen ones that looked similar, they’re all Armenian churches - they’ve had that design for well over a millennium and a half now.
Note that these are often old churches where services were attended standing, hence space for seating was not necessary.
My alma mater has a small chapel that was shipped over stone-by-stone from France. They still hold services in it every weekday.