From what i’ve seen a modern church usually has an area for the mass (I know there is a name for this area but I can’t remember it right now for some reason), a gymnasium and about 10-30 smaller rooms. What are the 10-30 small rooms for exactly? What all activities go on in them?
Offhand I can think of
Sunday school
A.A. meetings
daycare
There have to be more uses for them though, so what all do people use those rooms for?
I don’t think you’re going to get the answer you’re looking for without some jokes!
Well, the church where my aunt sings, St Luke’s, is a classic 1950s-style building in Peterborough. The main hall looks like it came out of a Danish Modern Catalogue. But there are also offices, changerooms, washrooms, a meeting hall/gymnasium with attached kitchen, schoolrooms, and probably utility rooms and a furnace room.
Why would there need to be even more uses? Basically, they are for any small group meeting: prayer, study, planning (finances, worship, service, etc.), social gathering (the quilting group does not need the entire church to work on their communal project and they don’t want to have to listen to the little kids learn to recite their prayers. Usually*, the more classes for children the more rooms, because you have 6 - 13 groups that might need to meet simultaneously.
My church has not that many: a large gathering area for dinners and such, two meeting rooms, a nursery, and a library. The sacristy can be pressed into service for a small meeting and there is a small chapel in addition to the principal worship area.
The word for the worship area that you were forgetting may have been nave. Technically, a nave (from the Latin for ship or boat) only identifies the long hall of a basilica-form church (long and narrow like an overturned boat, often with columns down the sides). On the other hand, it has tended to come into general use to mean “worship area” because the overwhelming number of churches built between the fourth and mid-twentieth centuries did, in fact, follow the basilica plan (or the modified cross shape based on an extension of the basilica)
Well, if you’re a serial killer, you could hide the victim’s body in the belltower.
Does that help? 
I’ve never attended a large church, and only been in them for weddings and funerals. But, I’ve always wondered what all the rooms were for also.
The small country church I attended as a child, just had one room for 100 years or so, then in the 70s they added two class rooms for the teens and little kids.
It wasn’t until 15 years later, that they added restrooms. :dubious:
In addition to the sanctuary (which may include narthex, nave, choir, chancel, and apse), the large worship area, you’ll have a wide variety of other rooms in a church building or complex.
Obviously, any church with indoor plumbing will have restrooms for its members’ use.
In a church that does communion services regularly, there will be a sacristy located adjacent to the chancel area, which is basically a storage-and-preparation area for the communion elements and vessels, and other “ecclesiastical tableware” like a missal stand, collection plates, ciborium, pyx, etc.
Adjacent to the sacristy will often be a vestry, which has nothing to do with the governing board for the church that may also be called by that name, but is a place where the ministers, acolytes, choir, etc. put on their vestments.
As Tom~ noted, there will be a variety of religious education classrooms. The church is also likely to have a library including books of interest to parishioners, which is often where an adult religious education class meets.
Typically, the clergyman will have his own office, adjacent to which may be one or more offices for a secretary providing him support and for various members holding church offices. (E.g., the church treasurer may need a place to keep and work on his financial records at the church.)
Most churches of any substantial size will have a small chapel suitable for private devotions and small-group services, separate from the large sanctuary.
There is generally a large room suitable for church dinners, parish meetings, non-worship entertainment events, etc. This may be beneath the sanctuary, in which case it is the undercroft, or it may be in another wing altogether. Adjacent to this room is probably a large institutional-size kitchen.
Pre-Renaissance churches in Europe will often have a Baptistry, a separate room or building where baptisms are performed. With the Renaissance and Reformation, it became the custom in both Protestantism and Catholicism to have the accouterments needed for a baptism in the sanctuary itself.
There is sometimes a separate room for the choir’s rehearsals.
The church may have a variety of social ministries which need their own facilities. For example, an inner-city church may sponsor a health clinic for its poor neighbors. It may provide facilities for charitable or service organizations: a counseling center, AA, a crocheting club, a gay youth meetingplace, etc. Their needs will be as various as their identities: a food bank, for example, will need dry secure storage for its foodstuffs. A teen center may need the equivalent of a family room with couches, tables, TV, and perhaps a pingpong table or similar recreational furniture.
Another possible word for worship area is “Sanctuary”–although the sanctuaries I frequent don’t generally have mass held in them.
Smaller rooms are often used primarily for Sunday School with nursery school (during the week) or Vacation Bible School being other alternatives. There is often a choir room- although not neccessarily. (Not all churches have choirs, and for some that do have choirs rehearsing in the sanctuary is convenient). Other rooms may be offices, chapels, or have other purposes.
In the church I grew up in, one Thursday in October, each Sunday School room was given a different purpose. The day was Turkey Dinner day and one room was dedicated to pies, one to corn, one to mashed potatoes, etc. The fellowship hall was where dinner was served to a thousand people in the space of about 5 hours.
Still, at some level smaller rooms in a church are probably there mostly for Sunday School and may have many other uses based on the fact that they already exist.
In my church there are: the main worship area (can be subdivided into 3 rooms, if necessary; it’s also used for large meetings, concerts and other performances); a sacristy where the priests vestments, books, bread and wine for communion are kept; a chapel, offices for pastoral and administrative staff; conference rooms; classrooms; a social hall; a kitchen; restrooms; nursery/lounge. The social hall, conference rooms and classrooms are used for all manner of meetings, classes, rehearsals, study groups, studying (we have a large student membership), dinners, receptions and probably other things I’m forgetting.
GT
My parish church doesn’t have a lot of extra small rooms. It’s the traditional rectangular shape with sanctuary, two aisles and narthex. There’s a crypt downstairs (currently occupied by the Presbyterians whose church is being renovated) and a couple of small storerooms.
In my former church, the rooms were:
[ul][li]Sanctuary - for Sunday morning and evening worship services and the “main” (adult) Bible study on Wednesday nights[/li][li]Fellowship Hall (with attached kitchen)- for youth meetings on Wednesday nights, choir rehearsal on Thursday nights, and any and all events with food[/li][li]Upper Rooms 1 & 2 - for various prayer group meetings, various church staff meetings, youth choir rehearsal and junior youth meetings on Wednesday nights[/li][li]Upper Rooms 3 & 4 - for various small meetings between individuals and/or pastoral staff[/li][li]Nursery & Nurslings Room - child care was provided for all Sunday services, Wednesday nights and for various ladies’ and mothers’ meetings during the week. The Nurslings Room afforded privacy for mothers to nurse their children while still watching and hearing the services in the main sanctuary on closed circuit TV[/li][li]Preschool Classrooms A & B - For Sunday school and Wednesday Night Classes for 3 year olds and 4 year olds[/li][li]Kindergarten Classroom - Sunday school/Wednesday night classes for kindergarteners[/li][li]Classrooms 1 through 8 - Sunday school/Wednesday night classes for Grades 1-8[/li][li]Choir Robing/Baptism Prep Room - Just like it sounds like, the choir prepared for services here, as did those being baptized, since the room led to the baptistry[/li][li]Bridal Room - A room just for the bride and her attendants before weddings[/li][li]Communion Room - Where communion (we pass the elements through the pews) was prepared[/li][li]Board Room - Where the board of elders had their monthly meetings and the church staff ate lunch daily[/li][li]Library - A collection of books, movies, music and various other resources that were loaned to the congregation[/li][li]Sound Room - Rather obvious[/li][li]Counseling Office - Also obvious[/li][li]Storage rooms 1 & 2 - Uber obvious[/li][li]Janitorial room - Screamingly obvious[/li][li]Worship preparation room - Where the pastoral staff and worship team met for preparation/prayer before services[/li]Offices - The church secretary, finance director, facilities manager, children’s pastor, youth pastor, minister of music, administrative pastor, outreach pastor, counseling pastor, college/singles pastor, women’s ministry director, senior ministry director, head pastor, head pastor’s secretary and head pastor’s wife have their own offices[/ul]
In my church (well, I don’t go to church any more but that’s besides the point) there was:
The sanctuary
Room behind the sanctuary where the sanctuary crap was kept. Like the candle lighter thing for the acolytes, and the spare wine cups and communion trays and whatnot.
Multipurpose room with cafeteria tables that served as a lunchroom/meeting place, etc.
Kitchen
Midweek school room
Other midweek school room
Room with a piano and not much else
Pre-school room
Nursery
Kid’s play room
Office
and a downstairs basement/storage/kid’s craft area that had about 6 or 7 additional rooms.
Probably a couple other rooms that I’m not remembering. I haven’t been there in a while.
From what I can remember, in the church I grew up, there was the sanctuary, the pastors’ offices, the choir room, the large multi-purpose room (often used for adult sunday school classes, medium sized church meetings, smaller get togethers, etc. There was a kitchen connected to it), the library, the nursery room (for infants), the toddler room, the pre-school room, one Sunday School room each for every grade from K-5 (some of those were cabins), the middle school/jr high room, the HS room, the gym, the big kitchen, and then storage space.
Not to mention bathrooms.
They did run a nursery school during the week, which used up some of the rooms - but there were times when a lot of rooms were not used.
Still, Sunday morning during Sunday School hour, most all of that space (and occasionally some hallway area) was being actively used.
We had the usual Catholic church rooms. When I was an altar girl, I got to see all of them. There was the room where we stored our robes and the room where they stored our medalions, the wine and all that other stuff. The gym. The function hall. A little closet type room for the CCD classes. The thrift store, the bathrooms, the choir loft (not that we had a choir), the confessional thingies - I don’t remember all the offical names.
We didn’t really have any other rooms than those.
I cannot recall the specific names for the room in which the Acolytes put on their robes, and the Priest his vestments, as well as the small room to the right (usually) of the alter in which the Sacrements are prepared, and the vessels cleansed after Mass. The sinks in the old fashioned churches of that room drained directly into the ground, so that any holy water from the ablutions (if the Priest is high church, I served as acolyte for more than one who was) would go back to the earth. This is an Episcopal church, but the layout is pretty much the same as a Catholic church. Polycarp, do you recall the names?
Here is a page that has images of an Episcopal cathedral in Kansas, as well as a chapel at a summer camp. Sunrises from that chapel are gorgeous, that’s the summer camp I went to as a kid, the pictures don’t capture all the dynamic light and colors you can see from the chapal, which faces the lake. Mist rising from the lake as the sunrises is beautiful. (The letters stand for Protestant Episcopal Church U.S.A. btw.)
Also, a large enough church will have quarters onsite where the pastor lives, although these usually seem to look recognizably ‘domestic’ in contrast to the rest of the facility. On the other hand, these quarters will sometimes be near, but not on, the actual church site.
Vestry [As distinguished from Vestry =Official Board =Session =Parish Council]
Sacristy
The sink is a piscina, which literally means “fishpond.”
In the classic basilica/cathedral structure, the church sanctuary is built as a long, often narrow auditorium facing east, with two short side protrusions to give a cross-shaped footprint. At the west end, a small area is set off as an entry/vestibule distinct from the auditorium proper; this is the narthex. The main seating area is, as Tom~ noted, the nave, so called because in elevation cross-section it looks like an overturned boat. The two side protrusions to give the cross shape are the transepts, and either or both may have side altars at the end to make them into chapels. The point where the central aisles of nave and transepts come together is the crossing, and as Zabali Clawbane’s link shows, often has a large cross inlaid on the floor at that point. There may also be a cross inlaid in the pavement immediately adjacent to the main entry. These mark points where the bishop symbolically marks the site with his crozier during the consecration of the church building as a worship site.
In the traditional structures, the short extension eastward of the auditorium past the crossing is divided into two areas. First is a section where pews are set in an east-west rather than north-south orientation, customarily occupied by a choir during normal services, and called the choir (as an architectural term, distinct from the chorus of singers that sits there). Beyond that is an altar rail suitable for kneeling at to receive communion, etc., and within the altar rail is the chancel, whose focus is the altar at which offerings of alms are presented and the Holy Communion/Eucharist/Divine Liturgy/Mass/Lord’s Supper celebrated. In some forms of traditional architecture, the altar is up against the east wall of the church, with a reredos as decorative backing for the altar; in others, the altar is freestanding and the east wall of the church is rounded to produce an apse. Many churches have, however, moved the altar from the easternmost point to somewhere near the crossing, to bring the Eucharistic celebration “into the midst of the people.” A pulpit from which the sermon/homily is preached and a lectern containing a large Bible stand at the sides of the main passage to the chancel, either near its entry, or, more often, between choir and crossing. (Traditionally the first reading, from one of the Epistles, was done from the lectern and the second, from one of the Gospels, from the pulpit, giving rise to the terms “Epistle and Gospel sides” of the church.)
If the church has a large pipe organ, somewhere (generally right under the pipes) will be the Wind Room - quite literally a room full of air for the organ. The large pipes that make the low tones that shake the walls need a LOT of air. Really big organs might have multiple wind rooms.
I wanna go to a church that has a Pie Room!
Go find one.
And, when come back, bring pie.
I’ve waited years to do that…