After serving as an ordained minister for years, John Sammons started selling school furniture and church pews. He often said that somebody ought to build a good chair for churches, and he eventually decided to do it himself.

He designed and built the first model in his garage, and then showed it to his family.

"Do you think people will buy that?" he asked them.

They thought so. And they were right.

Sammons' first chair was among the first to pave the way for flexible seating—sometimes referred to as "stackable chairs"—in churches. More than 40 years later, Church Chair now distributes chairs throughout the United States and to nearly 50 countries. Several other manufacturers, including ChairTex, Irwin Seating Company, and Bertolini, also have established long track records with flexible seating, creating a bona fide niche category serving churches.

"We started building the first chairs in the garage, borrowed a little money, and before we knew it, we had a manufacturing industry," says Dean Sammons, John's son and the current president of Church Chair.

Growing Demand
Sammons believes the high demand for flexible seating is due largely to the many benefits of quality chairs.

"They're very comfortable and they join together in a bench-like formation," Sammons says. "They're extremely flexible. If you need to add a few seats or remove a few, it's not a problem."

Sammons is also proud of his chairs' durability. In fact, he once used four chairs to support the weight of his Dodge Ram pickup truck.

"We've also stacked up to 2,000 pounds on one chair," Sammons says. "These frames are so sturdy, they shouldn't break."

But if that's not reassuring enough, Church Chair is one of the manufacturers that offers a lifetime warranty on its frame. The chair's fabric comes with its own warranty.

"I don't like to hear about any problems with my chairs," Sammons says. "It's very seldom we have any problems, but if we do, we'll take care of it."

Church Chair may have been a pioneer for flexible seating options, but it certainly isn't the only option.

"Flexible seating is the way of the future," says Roland Rietz, general manager of ChairTex. "As churches are trying to make a bigger impact in the community, they're trying to better utilize their space. So they're using their facilities for more than just a sanctuary."

When churches renovate their facilities, Rietz says many of them are putting down new carpet, removing the pews, and putting in chairs.

"I've never heard of a church wanting to sell their chairs to put in pews," Rietz says.

One Chair, Many Uses
Aspen Group is a church design and construction company that builds and designs worship facilities for churches. Greg Snider, a senior project developer for Aspen Group, is familiar with the seating options available to churches.

"I guide the church through the decision-making steps when they're thinking through seating options," Snider says. "The first question I ask is, 'Do you want a dedicated space for worship, or do you want it to be multi-purpose?'"

"Multi-purpose" doesn't necessarily refer to a sanctuary that's also a gym. Snider says that combination is becoming less common.

"Multi-purpose can mean it's used as a place to hold conferences, or as a banquet facility; it's not just a fixed, Sunday-seating experience," Snider says. "Anytime [the space] is going to be multi-purpose, it's going to be a flat floor with flexible seating."

Snider estimates that fifty percent of churches are choosing flexible seating for their worship venue, while only five to ten percent of churches are choosing fixed seating for their entire venue.

"I think the greatest trend is the combination [of fixed seating and flexible seating]," Snider says. "If only five to ten percent of churches are doing totally fixed seating, forty to fifty percent are doing mixed."

Half the Price
The two most common types of fixed seating are pews and theater seats. Theater seats are comparable to stackable chairs, except that theater seats tend to be even more comfortable—and they're attached to the floor. For churches, the most important difference is found on the price tag.

"To get a good quality stackable chair, you're in the $50 range," Snider says. "A fixed theater seat starts at $115-$120. Pews are in the same range."

Varying installation and shipment charges can also affect the bottom line. Snider says a good rule of thumb is that flexible seating will be at least half the price of fixed seating.

"Cost [of theater seating] is double what a stacked chair would be," says Les Lundberg, sales manager for Irwin Seating Company, which specializes in theater seating options. "Cost is always an issue. Generally, people use stackable chairs if they're in a multi-purpose space where the sanctuary is used for more than one thing. But if it's just a sanctuary, the only reason you'd want stacked chairs instead of theater seating is cost."

Lundberg acknowledges that theater seating is more prominent in large churches. In large worship settings, sloped floors are necessary for establishing sightlines.

"A lot of buildings are being built with a floor that slopes downward toward the front of the auditorium," Lundberg says. "They do that so people can see the pastor or priest. But when you have a sloped floor, you cannot use a stackable chair."

But that's not the only reason larger churches elect to go with theater seating.

"One of the reasons people are putting [theater seating] in churches is that it gives them more capacity in the same space," Lundberg says.

Building codes specify that there must be a certain amount of space between rows of seats.
"With theater-style chairs, that measurement is done in the up position," Lundberg says. "So you get more capacity with theater seating than you do with pews or stackable chairs."

Flexible Features
Portability isn't the only thing that makes stackable chairs flexible. These chairs can also be equipped with all the accoutrements provided by pews.

"Stackable sanctuary seats have the options for housing a Bible or hymnal—with a pocket on the back or a rack on the bottom," Snider says. "They can come with communion cupholders. They interlock. So all of that can be accomplished with a stackable chair, and most people don't realize that."

Chair manufacturers have also created an attachment for the end of a row of chairs.

"It's a stand-alone piece that snaps onto the chair so it almost looks like a pew," Snider says. "It creates a more formal look—and makes it look more like rows of pews instead of chairs."
La Farge Free Methodist Church in La Farge, Wisconsin, purchased new chairs six years ago from Church Chair.

"In comparison to the old wooden church pews, the chairs have been a lot more comfortable for the folks," says Mark Phillips, La Farge Free Methodist's pastor. "And it gives us more flexibility for a wedding or event. If we have an outreach event, we can move the chairs around. The wooden pews were nailed down, and they cluttered things up."

Phillips has heard visitors comment on the comfort of the church's chairs. And he is more than satisfied with their durability.

"Our church is used quite a bit, but there's no wear and tear on the chairs," Phillips says. "I've had no complaints and no regrets."

Flexible seating also allows churches to rearrange their worship setting on a weekly basis, something Pastor Curt Hughes particularly enjoys. Hughes pastors Life Church in Wheaton, Illinois. The church hosts its weekend services in a local community center.

"Every week we're able to take the specific purpose we have and structure the space accordingly," Hughes says. "Creating an atmosphere can really impact the message."

Setup and Storage
On an average weekend, Life Church sets up 275 chairs. Set-up takes thirty minutes for two people—one of whom is Hughes. But he doesn't mind.

"I love touching each chair and praying over it as we're setting up," Hughes says. "That's become a Sunday morning ritual for me."

Moving chairs before and after a service isn't the only drawback. Storage space can also become an issue.

"Most churches are going with a comfortable chair with a padded seat and padded back," Snider says. "The only negative is that you can only stack those so high, which means you need storage space where you can stack them when they're not being used."

"As far as how they work, the comfort, and the ease to move them—I have not talked to a church that has been disappointed with flexible seating," Snider says.

Comfort for All
Before Life Church started using the padded, comfortable chairs, it used a standard folding chair for its weekend services.

"The folding chairs weren't holding up," Hughes says. "They were sloping downward."
Eventually, the director of the community center where Life Church meets witnessed an incident involving a folding chair collapsing underneath someone. After that, the community center purchased new chairs.

Hughes says the comfort level went up 100 percent.

"The bottom line is that everyone has a comfortable seat," Hughes says. "The chairs are great."

Good Stewardship
Flexible seating options also let churches create a worship setting that best suits their services.

Bruce Prock is vice president of sales and marketing for Bertolini—another leader in the church chair industry.

"If you want individualized seating," Prock says, "whether you go with a chair or theater seat really depends on a couple things: whether you want to spend the money for theater seating and whether you need [theater seats] or not."

Prock acknowledges that theater seating is a better fit for some worship settings, such as churches that are going to focus on theatrical performances.

The price of flexible seating does not differ greatly between manufacturers. The standards for quality, however, are not as consistent.

Prock warns churches to beware of buying chairs from companies that are not using quality materials—or companies that are importing parts from other countries.

"If you buy a chair that's made by just anybody, or even worse, if you happen to get chairs imported from overseas," Prock says, "five years from now, if they start falling apart, you might not have anything to do about it."

Bertolini, Church Chair, Irwin, and ChairTex all have good reputations for quality manufacturing with flexible seating.

Snider and his associates at Aspen Group have heard churches say that flexible seating is essentially "good stewardship"—referring not just to the purchase of dependable, long-lasting chairs, but also the way those chairs allow for a more effective use of the church facilities.

"Many churches can't afford to build fellowship halls as large as their sanctuaries, so they're making their seating flexible to use that same space in multiple ways," Snider says. "The cost of a well-made, stackable chair is half that of a fixed chair. So there's a stewardship component of the upfront cost and a stewardship component in the ability to use that space multiple times a week and in multiple ways."

This article originally appeared in Your Church magazine.