Pew etiquette

I often mused on the subject of pew etiquette during my year of visiting churches, partly because I was consciously trying to observe how people in various congregations “did church,” and partly because, as a constant newcomer, I was a little worried about violating unknown rules.

I’m not talking about sitting in the wrong pew. Everyone has heard jokes about that – visitors sit in the fourth pew from the front on the left, and the family that usually sits there every week is offended and discombobulated – someone is sitting in OUR pew! Oh no - what should we do? I suspect that I was guilty of usurping someone’s accustomed seat on one or two occasions during my year of visiting, but it couldn’t have been much of a problem in most churches, since almost all of them had plenty of empty pews to spare. But some churches had a healthy number of folks sitting in the pews, and those are the occasions when I observed the kind of bad pew etiquette that bothers me.

Ten minutes before the service begins, most churches have a seating pattern that looks like the diagram above.

Everyone who arrives after this must either sit in the three empty pews at the front (which no one wants to do), or petition the Defenders of the Aisle Seats for admittance. Most pews are placed so close together that you can’t walk past the people on the ends to get to the middle. The Defenders sometimes get up and stand on the side, enabling newcomers to walk to the middle. More polite folks don’t force the newcomers to the middle of the pew -- they slide toward the middle themselves.

Then there is the problem of inadequate pew-sliding. How many times have I witnessed this ridiculous pantomime! For example, say there is a family of three sitting on the aisle, and another family of three comes along and begs permission to please sit down. The first family politely scootches over to give the second family a place to sit.

Only – and this seems to happen EVERY SINGLE TIME – they never scootch over enough. The person farthest from the aisle moves over about the distance of one and one half butt cheeks, and the next person follows suit, except a little less, and so forth. The first member of the second family then tries to sit down, but it’s a tight fit, and then the first family begins another round of unsatisfactory scootching, and this is followed by a third or fourth round, until finally both families are seated. They are usually still too close to each other, and as soon as everyone rises for the first hymn, the whole gaggle takes another step to the left or right, depending on which side of the aisle they are on, and finally everyone is sitting in some semblance of comfort. AND THEN THIS HAPPENS AGAIN NEXT WEEK.

Therefore, I have advice for churches that would like to be more visitor-friendly, from the perspective of a constant visitor.

Unless you know perfectly well that you will have plenty of empty pews available at every service, why not ask people to scootch over toward the middle of the pew if they arrive first? Make it easy for people to find a seat, visitors and members alike. Don’t have every pew blocked on both ends by the Defenders of the Aisle Seats. It’s discouraging, and unfriendly, and really, really unnecessary.

And, of course, it will never change.