New! Personal stories from fellow Christians to help you grow.
Last year Church by the Bridge underwent a major redevelopment. It is a beautiful building that we wanted to care for and prepare for many more years of gospel ministry. It was important for us to celebrate the history of the building - we wanted to make much of the structure, the stained-glass, the wooden rafters, etc. - and ensure that any improvements to the church didn't detract from these things. The church had pews that weren't particularly historic - 1970s in fact. These pews were to be replaced with chairs, to ensure the church could be a more flexible space - for smaller group gatherings, or to enable us to completely clear the space out altogether. Selecting a chair was one of the most difficult decisions we experienced! There are a lot of chairs on the market. There are a lot of terrible chairs (particularly those that bill themselves as 'church chairs). There aren't many chairs that look good in an historic space. Also, chairs are an important decision. Everyone will sit on a chair. There are lots of different body shapes. And everyone has an opinion about chairs (fewer people have an opinion about door handles).
We knew the chairs needed to be:
After much deliberation, we selected the Forum. It is an excellent chair, that we have no regrets in selecting and would recommend to any other church. Here's some photos:
There are lots of colour combinations for the leg/seat:
They stack very well:
They also link together, with a unique magnetic linking device:
This is how they look inside our building:
We've been very happy with them.
Chair pricing is highly flexible - depending on the selected chair, the materials used, whether or not it links, etc. However, to give you an idea, the chair that we selected (with the bleached beech frames and stained seat, and custom linking devices) were $395 + GST each, but due to the quantity we selected, we received a $100 discount per chair.
We purchased ours from Insitu Furniture. I recommend you speak with Jacqui - to organise a sample, and to work out the pricing for the number of chairs you require.
Since this post was first published, a newer version has been launched - the Forum 2.
