An Unexpected Sanctuary

If you listen closely, you can hear the jubilant sound of a congregation of about 600 people singing praises to their Lord. Every Sunday and Wednesday the church of Calvary Chapel Petaluma meets together in our new church building. However, this church building is not large and ornate with stained glass windows that glisten when the sun touches them and elongated wooden pews. This church building contains high neutral-colored walls without decorations, individual itchy chairs, and cracked cement floors. This church building sits within a neighborhood of office buildings and companies hidden in the winding roads of the industrialized area of Petaluma.

When one walks into the front door of Calvary Chapel Petaluma, they are first greeted with friendly, enthusiastic, smiling faces, welcoming you to the church. Once taking their first steps in, they are met by a small and quaint lobby, which hosts posters on the wall of upcoming events in the church and a few pictures of church members, a reception desk, and laminate counters blanketed with coffee pots and small baskets of assorted tea bags. The extended part of the lobby contains a few leather chairs sitting in front of a flat screen television showing the message currently being talked about in the next room. The chairs are conviniently placed for those few self-conscious people who fear of interrupting the Bible study.

One can also view the Toddler’s room from the lobby. The room is guarded by a miniature white gate, mostly used in homes to keep curious youngsters from sneaking into rooms where their scolding mother has told them not to go. The walls of the toddler room are painted in a radiant array of colors, resembling a healthy green field covered by trees, rivers, plants, and a diverse spectrum of gentle animals, in which children can point and say, “rabbit,” in their tongue-tied toddler tone, and clap and cheer at their accomplishment. Covering the ground are dolls and blocks and plastic dollhouses in which young toddlers can use their developing imaginations. The small refrigerator in the corner contains various snack foods to feed the toddlers during their snack time. When opened, the scent of peanut butter sweeps across the classroom, persuading the hungry mouths of the toddlers to beg for their food. The room also houses diminutive wooden tables bordered by plastic blue chairs that are used in kindergarten classrooms. Puzzles and coloring pages adorn the tables, for those children that consider themselves “big kids.”

The toddler room, although one of the first rooms that one sees when they enter the church, is actually an emulation of the several rooms concealed in the back of the building. As one walks along the hallway, they find themselves watching the rooms grow older and more mature. The nursery comes first, however, and its mellow and gentle themes are soothing to anyone who walks in. Further down the hall is the preschooler through kindergarten classroom. This classroom is a huge advancement from the previous classrooms because of the more developed appearance that it holds; for the walls are give the illusion of sitting inside a house during the times when Jesus lived. The chalky brown colors resemble the walls made of straw and mud, and the windows simply drawn onto the wall give a brief glimpse of the imaginary town that this house was in. The children picture themselves during this ancient time as they’re learning about it.

Two more classrooms occupy the hallway, which house the first through third graders, and the fourth through sixth graders. The walls in these classrooms, however, are still a work in progress. The fourth through sixth grade class only contains a small mural, portraying a city from Jesus’ time with the temple and houses intricately drawn on the pale walls. The children’s classrooms confront the sanctuary of the Children’s Ministry. This simple area holds the children during worship time and also for the recreation time for the younger children, where they can innocently shout with pleasure and psychotically run about as if it were their last day to live.

Breaking away from the children’s ministry area, we reach the rambunctious, luminous, and altogether entertaining room of the junior high ministry. The walls resemble a brightly colored elementary school classroom, painted to hopefully make each student feel cheerful and merry to be at school. Each side is painted a different incandescent hue. The front of the room, however, displays a picture resembling graffiti, covered with spray paint. The picture contains a cross, Bible verses, and other random splashes of paint. The word shown on the wall is “Roots,” meaning the children of God are to put our roots into God, so that we can grow in him.

There is no separate room for the high school ministry, for they sit and listen and worship with the adults in the large and vast sanctuary. The sanctuary holds hundreds of bouncy brown individual chairs, resting on the shiny and cracked cement floor. The chairs all bow towards the stage, smothered by blue itchy carpet. Guitars, pianos, and drum sets sit on the stage as instruments to praise the Lord, however, with modern rock music. At the front and center of the stage is the pastor’s pulpit, made of intricately carved wood, like a tree enveloped with a vine that weaves around the branches, all leading up to a wooden open book, like the canopy on the tops of the trees. Finally, the whole sanctuary gazes up at an elaborately made hand-carved wooden cross, the center and the focus of the congregation at all times.

-Rachel