Wet Basements and Dingy Bathrooms

When I first came to Mountain View in 1982, we met in what we now call “the classic building” – built in 1955.  The concrete block walls were two different shades of drab green and the carpet was orange and tearing loose from its backing at several places, bunching up and creating tripping hazards.  

Each of the eighty chairs had a removable white seat cushion decorated with American eagles.  Old ceiling lamps hung from soft square ceiling tiles, many of which had come loose, buckling parts of the ceiling and looking as if they’d fall on the congregation at any moment.


There was no foyer.  There was a little brick stoop outside (it’s still there) and upon entering the double-wooden doors (now replaced with lots of glass) you found yourself immediately in the church service – with everyone turning around staring at you if you were late!  


A small rack hung on the front wall announcing that week’s hymn numbers and the amount of the previous week’s offering.  The pulpit was small and wore the same paneling as the wall behind it.  I don’t remember if the tiny and ancient microphone screwed to the pulpit worked or not.  I never needed it.


We had a piano and an organ that no one played.  The wall behind the pulpit was thin wood-grain paneling, sporting gold spray-painted cardboard letters, reading “I AM THE WAY, THE TRUTH, AND THE LIFE – JOHN 14.6”


The window frames were metal, dulled with oxidization and not covered with storm windows.  The white curtains on each window were brittle and frayed.  The calluses on my fingers pulled off strands of material if I manipulated the curtains.


When it rained water shot through a small hole in the block wall in the basement, looking like a little water fountain right at the bottom of the steps.  The floor of the basement was rough, unfinished concrete.


The bathrooms in the basement were just two toilets, one for men and one for women, each in a narrow closet, barely wider than my shoulders.  From the ceiling in each closet hung a naked light bulb with a pull string.  The doors to each toilet were thin pieces of plywood barely covered by a veneer of canary yellow paint.  The grain of the wood was visible through the paint.


The boiler was a noisy, beastly hulk that wheezed and groaned whenever the thermostat awakened it to blow its hot breath through the oversized ducts hanging from the already low ceiling, alternating the building temperature between roasting and chilly.  That beast still hibernates in the dingy boiler room in the basement.


Experiencing the ugliness and discomfort of the classic building in my first months of pastoral service, I concluded that improving the building might improve the chances of people wanting to be there.  We couldn’t change everything all at once.  We had to take one step at a time.


I persuaded the leadership to hire a contractor to put an interior French drain in the basement to relieve the water pressure when it rained.  That got rid of the little water fountain that always appeared after storms.


Then we hired another contractor to remodel the bathrooms, utilizing the space more efficiently and making them roomier and brighter.


We had to spend a little money (in short supply in those early days) but those few simple improvements made our little congregation feel something was happening, that things were getting better, and those little steps of change generated excitement to be involved in making changes and being a part of whatever it was that seemed to be happening.


Little changes can have a positive effect on one’s outlook.


**The picture for this blog is the classic building as it was in the early 1980's.**