Randomize Church Seating

How do we make Catholic churches more welcoming?

I’m especially conscious of the problem as it relates to family seating. When I was single, I was easily distracted by seeing a family all in a pew together; I jumped to thinking of them as closed in on themselves, unapproachable. Now that I sit with my family, I still feel exactly the same thing, but from the other side: I feel closed in on my own pew, less able to approach the people around me.

It gives me an appreciation for religious traditions that separate the men from the women during worship. I don’t see any religious reason for the separation, but at least it gets people to mingle more! You should spend most of your time in church with your brothers and sisters in Christ and not your rest-of-the-time family.

Along those lines, my preferred way of solving this problem is randomized seating. When you walk in the door, the usher randomly generates a seat number for each person, and that’s where you go. Baby giving you trouble? Hand him to the lady next to you, she won’t mind. This also half-solves the teenager problem by getting them away from their parents! But come to think of it, it’s probably pretty awkward to pray next to your friends’ parents too.

I know randomized seating would never actually work. And I know that churches are just now starting to fill up again, and mixing families should probably wait until more people are comfortable with that. But after a long empty year, we need to kick community into high gear as soon as we can!

Here’s to reaching out every way we can.