Tonight my wife and I dropped off our daughter at a local church dance. There's a lot of churches in Utah, most are the same denomination--Mormon. And since the church as been in the area since 1847, there's a lot of different styles of churches.
About thirty or forty years ago, the church began building their buildings using a standard design. It makes sense--it saves money, time, and space needed for the buildings. New LDS churches look like a big rectangle with a sloped roof. In the center of the building is the chapel on one side and a gym/stage/activity center on the other. Lining the outside of the chapel and gym are classrooms, a kitchen, and administrative offices. It's an efficient, if not boring design. And those church buildings are all over the place in Utah and the surrounding states.
It wasn't always that way. I'm no historian, but I heard that back in the day, they sometimes hired local architects to design the buildings. That was back when church members not only helped finance the churches, but actually help build them as well. Because of that, there's some weirdly designed churches out there. The one where we dropped off our daughter tonight was a little different. We decided to take a little tour, and doing so, we came across a relic, something that used to be in every church.
We saw a cry room.
That might not be their official name, but that's what we called them. Being a member of a church that encourages its members to "be fruitful and multiply the earth," you get a lot of kids. To help the other church-goers better enjoy the service, the churches had rooms set aside for parents and the unruly youngsters to sit away from everyone else.
The church I attended as a youth had just such a room. It was on the second level and a big glass window allowed those parents and their children to look down on the meeting. The cry room we saw tonight was off to the side.
The new churches don't allow for cry rooms, of if they did, it would take some major redesigning. There's a lot to be said about having church members learn patience and long-suffering. Maybe that's why they no longer exist.
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