'Instant churches' convert public schools to worship spaces

Praise the Lord and pass the crates with the pre-fab pulpit and the portable baptistery inside. The Forest Hills Community Church is moving into P.S. 144 — sort of.

Every Sunday morning, the elementary school in Queens, like dozens more schools in New York City and thousands more nationwide, is transformed into a house of worship for a few hours.

There's no tally of how many churches, synagogues and mosques convert public school spaces into prayer places for the nominal cost of permits and promises to make no permanent changes in the school setting. What's clear is that there has been a steady rise in numbers as congregations find schools are available, affordable and accessible to families they want to reach.

Critics, including some courts, are concerned that these arrangements are an unconstitutional entanglement of church and state. They say these bargain permits effectively subsidize religious congregations who would have to pay steeply higher prices on the open market. They also note that the practice appears to favor Christian groups, which worship on Sundays — when school spaces are most often available.

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I have been sojourning with churches that meet for worship in non-traditional settings since 2001. I have worshipped in the conference room of a maritime museum, in a fire station, the dining area of a cafe, the banquet room of an university student center, and a movie theater in the same center. It is not my first time worshiping in non-traditional settings, having worshipped in a tennis club, a storefront, and a school gymnasium in the 1980s. My mother and her parents were members of a congregation that worshipped in a Quonset hut when I was an infant. When you worship in non-traditional settings, it reinforces the perception that the church is not a building but a people, which is what the New Testament teaches. This teaching is often lost on congregations that worship in a traditional setting.

"Church in a box" is challenging. However, you learn to travel light, and focus upon what is essential to being Christ's Church in the twenty-first century.