Designing a house is one thing. Designing God’s house is another entirely.
Just ask architect Doug Pasma, who is becoming known throughout the Midwest for his churches.
Since his first project five years ago, Pasma has designed 13 churches and worked on scores of others. Prominent among them are relatively new nondenominational churches and long established congregations wanting to reach surrounding neighborhoods using more contemporary methods.
His clients include Willow Creek Community Church, which is planning to add a 7,500-seat auditorium and three buildings to its South Barrington campus; and Harvest Bible Chapel in Rolling Meadows, which was converted from a warehouse.
The best church designs, Pasma says, help worshipers maintain a spiritual focus.
“God is in the building, but God is not the building itself,” he said.
Pasma’s modern designs are literally changing the faces of churches as well as the worship services, say many pastors who have worked with him. The result, they add, is a reflection of Pasma’s Christian faith: bold, strong and focused on God.
“He clearly understands and respects our heritage,” said David Handley, senior pastor of First Presbyterian Church of Evanston, where Pasma is revamping a portion of the congregation’s century-old sanctuary.
“At the same time, he knows how to make changes so that the church becomes a place where a new generation of seekers and believers will hear the gospel communicated in today’s language.”
Pasma lives on Chicago’s North Side, and attends a nondenominational church in Lincoln Park. The drawings and three-dimensional models that clutter the Sherman Avenue office in Evanston that Pasma shares with partner Greg Goss aren’t your typical stained-glass-and-steeple structures.
Pasma is partial to straight edges and wide, open spaces flooded with natural light where people can meet and greet before and after services. He even designed an outdoor patio for one Chicago church whose plans are still on the drawing board.
His sanctuaries are often rounded–to create intimacy and interactivity, he said–and almost always contain stages and space for large video screens. By straying from ornate moldings and intricate woodwork and statues, Pasma said his designs give churches greater flexibility to use rooms for a variety of purposes.
That doesn’t mean the 42-year-old Grand Rapids, Mich., native isn’t interested in leaving behind a professional mark. Architecture, Pasma said, is a business driven by ego–one of the reasons he said he continues to concentrate on designing churches.
Drawing architectural plans with God constantly in mind helps to keep him humble, he said.
Before designing his first church, he said he stood on the land where it would be built and prayed that his work would please the Lord. It’s a practice he continues with each new project.
Pasma said his reward comes each time he stands in a finished sanctuary–as he did last week at Harvest Bible Chapel.
“I felt God’s presence there so powerfully,” he said, “that I just cried.”
