River of Life Church

The River of Life Church has an active and growing congregation and one which is tightly embedded within its local community. Such close ties made the fire that destroyed the previous church campus all the more painful to those whom the church served. Seeking a new home, the church purchased land along a major state highway and sought to boost its presence in the neighborhood by capitalizing on the exposure of well over ten thousand cars daily. In describing the promise of the site, one member stated that such exposure to passersby would allow the church to be a billboard to the community.

It was this statement that began a thought process of how to make a place of worship along a highway of cars. Recalling Venturi and Brown’s seminal text, Learning from Las Vegas, the design began as a consideration of the car and its relationship to the church site where thousands of people pass the site at high speeds. The church needed something to capture drivers’ attention. It needed the billboard previously mentioned by the church member. And thus began the design of a church described by Venturi as a “decorated shed”; its façade acting as the “billboard” or decoration on an otherwise simple shed.

Beyond the glass “billboard” of sufficient height and scale to compete with the highway and openness of the site, the church design began with a centrally located sanctuary ringed by circulation. A direct path moving people from front-to-rear was given greater hierarchy through increased width and height as expressed in the front façade and drove the location of building entry. Children’s ministry and administration offices are located immediately opposite the sanctuary while preserving open space for the future addition of youth ministry and food pantry.