Occasionally folks ask me, "What do you find to be the most common uses of your Screenflex Room dividers in churches?" Here is my reply !!

HOW DO WE USE ROOM DIVIDERS???

LET’S COUNT THE WAYS….

By their very nature of being both religious based and community based, most churches have at least two large open rooms. The first is the sanctuary where the congregation worships, holds ceremonies and other various rites. The second open room has many different names. Whether you refer to it as the:

• Fellowship Hall
• Family Life Center
• Multi Purpose Room
• Basement
• or even Gymnatorium

All these names refer to the same basic type of room. These names refer to a large open room to be used for church based programs/events other than worship. Open rooms are both needed and useful for large gatherings from Awana and Cub Scout meetings to teen dances and wedding receptions. However what do you do when the large room would be more functional if it was divided into several smaller rooms for Sunday School classes or other purposes?

The answer obviously is to use Room Dividers! In their purest form, there are 3 different types of Room Dividers commonly used in churches today.

1. Portable, versatile Room Dividers on casters. These tackable, sound absorbing dividers easily roll into place, unfold accordion style and can be set up in any configuration as needed.
2. Office type cubical dividers. These Room Dividers are dragged or carried from the storage closet and placed as desired within the room.
3. Floor to ceiling dividers. These dividers are installed in tracks in the ceiling. When needed, they are pulled along the track to divide the room. To open up the room again, reverse the process.

What are the most common uses for Room Dividers?

By far the number one use is to create Religious Education classrooms (“Sunday School” classrooms). Personally, I am not sure whether children or adults are more easily distracted. Regardless, an easy way to eliminate all visual distractions and decrease extraneous distracting noise is to have a divider of sorts between the different classes. The divider helps cut down distractions and thus results in increased concentration on Religious Education classes for any age bracket. “Our children are getting a better Christian education” are words I’ve heard many times from customers since we began our Screenflex Room Divider business in the late 1980’s.

As we know, more and more of our churches are getting into the “ministry” of Child Care/Day Care. This ministry almost always takes place in the churches open room, creating the second most popular use of Room Dividers within a church. “How are they helpful?” you wonder…that’s easy! Oftentimes such programs minister to children ranging from infant age (3-12mos.) to pre-school (4-5 years). So while the range of age is “only” 5 years at a maximum, the difference in spacial needs at that young age is much different than a 5 year span as adults. How are those spacial needs met?

With Room Dividers! Commonly the open room is divided into 3 different sections i.e. Nursery, Playtime/Story/Reading area, and Nap time area. Obviously larger programs can have several “rooms” for each area. Many states have rules/regulations which help ensure that the “Certified” instructors in the child care areas can see the tasks being performed by “non-certified” instructors/helpers. Thus the height of the Room Divider and/or if they can be equipped with windows, becomes a consideration. Maintaining a clear line of site of some fashion between areas is important when setting up Room Dividers for child care. It is also important to note that this very same room with up to several dividers in use during the day, may need to have the dividers taken down and put away quickly when the last child leaves. This is so the room is wide open during the evening for a large meeting, congregation meal, or some other ministry. Likewise the dividers need to be put back into “Child Care” mode by the crack of dawn the next morning. Moral of the story…the easier it is to set up and take down the dividers, the better it is for you!

The open room in your church is used for more than Sunday School classes and Child Care…MUCH more! If your open room had a job description, the very last item on the page would likely be: “Other duties as assigned”! Thus the third most popular use for Room Dividers within churches is to help churches and administrators manage the use of the multipurpose room.

Sometimes two, three, or four members or groups need to use the room at the same time, especially on weekends. Depending on the size of your room, Room Dividers can easily be used to help ensure that multiple groups can efficiently use the same room at the same time without interfering with each other. Likewise, the flexibility/ease of use features of the dividers factor greatly into how simple it is (or isn’t) to create varied size rooms for the groups. Certainly a small group of a half dozen members who wish to discuss a book they all recently read do not need the same size room as someone who is having a baby or wedding shower. The same is true for any number of ministries or users. The names of the user groups may change, but the concept is the same. Room Dividers can be a huge help in managing the spacial needs in your multipurpose room and help make your life easier.

I’ve seen our Room Dividers perform a myriad of other useful functions in churches over the years. Welcome/bulletin boards, backdrops for speakers or the church play, hide construction debris, provide privacy for nursing mothers, help guide traffic flow, you name it. One clever youth group in Little Rock actually used their dividers to create a maze as part of their Haunted House during Halloween season. However the three most common uses of Room Dividers remain:

1. To create Sunday School classrooms
2. Divide any open room into smaller rooms daily for the child care ministry
3. Set up various size rooms for other uses/groups as needed.

So if you want your facility to do more for you and your congregation, consider using Screenflex Room Dividers …. the more versatile the better!