A Comparison of Church Chairs Pew and Theatre Seating

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The ChurchPlaza Digital Education series continues with this educational program which provides a comparison of church chairs, pew and theatre seating. Our mission is to serve churches and bring them quality seating and other superior products at the best possible prices. For additional information please visit http://churchplaza.com/. • Hello, I'm Dr. Thomas McElheny, founder and CEO of ChurchPlaza, and today we are going to compare the characteristics, benefits, and costs of individual church chairs, pews, and theater seats. Since 1986, ChurchPlaza has sold and delivered well more than two million church chairs and tens of thousands of theater and pew seats to America's churches. We also understand church cultures, worship practices, building design, cost, and preferences. Hopefully our experience will help you. We're going to divide our comparisons into four general seating characteristics: culture, comfort, space utilization, and cost. Choosing seating for your church is an individual and personal choice, and there are no absolute rights and wrongs, just what is best for your church. • Let's begin with the cultural aspect of choosing seating for your church, and this may be a difficult topic for many congregations. Pews are beautiful. They're traditional and can be particularly important to many. We have seen churches begin and end their review of seating choices with this topic. From a comfort perspective, pews are the least comfortable of the three seating options. No matter how nice cushioning is, straight seats and backs are not nearly as comfortable as a well-designed chair or theater seat. As a general rule, individual theater seats can be the most comfortable seating options, but much depends upon the design and quality of the product. Some higher-end church chairs can match the comfort of many theater seats, but seat design, quality of construction, and your individual preferences will determine that. Our suggestion, if undecided between theater seats or church chairs, is to obtain a sample of each and have members of your church compare. • Space utilization - and this topic has several perspective. It's a generally accepted fact today among church planners that pew seating will only be used to 80% of its capacity, and that's America's desire for personal space. This 20% loss of capacity factor with pews can impact the need to build or renovate space, and that can be a significant expense. Another aspect of space utilization is the requirement to permanently affix pews and theater seating to the floor, thus, limiting the use of that space. Individual chairs can be ganged together to provide a unified seating sense while also meeting fire codes then easily disengaged from one another and conveniently moved and stacked, thus, making the seating area usable for a wide variety of other application. This utility of individual chairs versus pew and theater seating has saved thousands of churches from the need to incur building or renovation cost. • Let's compare acquisition cost of each seating type on an apples-to-apples per seat basis, and to do so, I'm going to use comparisons of good products from known and reputable providers. The fact is there are cheaply made products of all three kinds of seating available. And while you might find something that appears to be a bargain, if it's not from an established and reputable provider, I would be very careful. • Quality, individual church and sanctuary chairs will cost from $35 to $60 per chair with an average shipping delivery cost of another six dollars per chair. Pews are generally priced on a linear foot basis, but one must then convert a linear foot into practical, usable seating space. And using the standard 22 to 24 inches per seat with all three, seating applications - 30 years ago it was 18 inches - then the 80% usable pew capacity standard, the actual cost per usable seat with pews then is going to be in the range of $100 to $150 per seat. • Theater seating also has a higher cost than individual chairs with good seats from a reputable company running somewhere between $130 to $250 per individual seat installed. As I noted earlier, seating is a very personal choice for your church. But what I've just shared with you is why today, 85% of all new church seating purchases are individual church and sanctuary chairs. • Please let us know if we can be of further service to your church as you evaluate your seating needs. And if we can be of help, please know that over the years, ChurchPlaza has been endorsed and recommended by more than 45 national denominations, ministries, and/or their publishing houses while no other provider of church seating has received even one endorsement - America's highest quality church seating at exceptional values and from people you can trust. Why would you go anywhere else? Blessings and Semper Fi.

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