Church Service

By David Menconi

As career strategies go, you could do a lot worse than to find an uncrowded niche. That’s worked out pretty well for Terry Byrd Eason ’74, who specializes in designing worship spaces.

“I’ve worked on a couple of synagogue projects and lots of Roman Catholic churches,” says Eason, who owns a liturgical design firm in Pittsboro, N.C. “But my main thing is mainstream Protestant and Episcopal churches. I’m not interested in the big-box evangelical mega-churches, which is like designing warehouses.”

Born in Fayetteville, N.C., Eason grew up as a churchgoer (he remains an active member of the Episcopal faith). After college, he began his career at design firms in Charlotte, N.C., and New York, N.Y., coming to realize he had a knack for designing worship spaces.

That dovetailed nicely with his interest in traditional church music (Eason notes that some of the churches he has renovated have also become classical-music concert venues). He launched his firm in New York in 1983 and moved it home to North Carolina in 1990, eventually settling in Fearrington Village near Pittsboro, N.C.

Eason has worked on more than 120 worship spaces nationally, from Washington National Cathedral in Washington, D.C., to numerous local spaces. Projects range from working with architects on overall structural and space-plan issues to designing accessories like a new baptismal font for Duke Chapel.

No matter the size of the project, Eason aims for functionality, keeping in mind that the word “liturgy” refers to how a particular congregation worships.

You don’t want it to feel like a doctor’s office.

“A good space has everyone properly arranged in relation to focal points, whether it’s preacher or a praise team,” he says. “It also has to somehow evoke the spiritual, which is hard to define beyond saying you don’t want it to feel like a doctor’s office. Some newer churches say the space is not so important, but in my experience churches need the focus of a place over the long haul.”