Pews

When ordering furnishings for the new sanctuary of Immanuel Church of the Nazarene, the Rev. Larry L. Cook didn't order a single pew, choir stand or organ pipe. Instead, he ordered a volleyball net, basketball hoops, and 550 chairs. Each Sunday after the 9:30 a.m. worship service, the sanctuary becomes a gym, ready for community use the rest of the week. "We wanted a space that can be used seven days a week to reach the community with the message of Jesus Christ," said the minister known to his congregation as Pastor Larry.

When Calvary Chapel of Philadelphia moved into a new 2,200-seat sanctuary in December, the expansive new space was supposed to relieve the pressures of rapid growth. The constant crush of incoming and outgoing worshipers on Sundays would disappear. The number of Sunday services could be reduced from six to three. But already there is a squeeze in the pews. And a fourth Sunday service will start in the next few months. "I guess healthy sheep reproduce," said Pastor Joe Focht, explaining the church's appeal.

Then there's the story of the pastor who gathered all the children around him at the Easter service. "What's different about church today, kids?" he asked. "It's full!" said one. Too true. On this, the holiest, most jubilant day in the Christian calendar, priests and ministers are known to gaze upon those unfamiliar faces and sigh wistfully. And while many in the pews today may be strangers, they do have a name. Some in the clergy call them the "C&Es. " That's short for the "Christmas and Easter" crowd.

Hundreds of little hands waved in the air as the seven-piece band thumped out the rhythm of "Louie, Louie. " Fresh lyrics flashed on the screen as small voices followed along: "Pharaoh, pharaoh, "Oh, baby, "Let my people go! Ugh! "Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. " Camp Treasure Island at Springton Presbyterian Church was off to a rollicking start. Packed into the pews in the small church were this year's 275 happy campers, from grades one through five. "The saddest thing is that we just can't fit any more children in," said Donna Weiss, who teaches the daily Bible lesson for the children.

Tony Capriola will never forget the wintry day in February when he and a crew of men braved the belfry of St. Mary's Church in Shamokin, Pa., and removed 2,750 pounds of bronze bells. "We hired a crane and risked our lives taking out those bells," Capriola said. The church had just been closed by the Archdiocese of Harrisburg and a church in Chester was eager to acquire its bells. "We didn't make more than a couple of thousand dollars from the job," Capriola said. "But I thought, 'What the heck.

Remember, Msgr. Harry Jordan told his grieving Gloucester City parish: The firefighters who died battling an Independence Day blaze were "martyrs for love. " Many residents of the blue-collar city who crowded into pews for a noon Mass yesterday sniffled as St. Mary's pastor spoke of the deaths, which have not been far from anyone's mind in recent days. "Those three men who died at Broadway and Mercer Thursday morning knew when they went in that house, with fire coming out of every window, that there were three children in there, and they knew better than any of us what could happen," Msgr.

Tony Capriola's shop might be the only place where the Stations of the Cross keep company with a carved figure of Merlin the magician and a heap of Life magazines topped with a cover shot of Edward Kennedy circa 1965. An oddball mix of church pews and artifacts, architectural antiques and sundry collectibles is stacked, piled and hung in a cavernous workroom and warehouse at 218 N. Warren Ave., Malvern. Capriola and his associate, Mark Curry, are architectural treasure hunters with an eye for glass, wood, iron and stone pieces that they can refurbish or rework.

Every Sunday morning, a group of smiling elderly folks dressed in their finest stands outside the Rising Sun Baptist Church in South Philadelphia waiting for services to begin. Yesterday, some of them stood not far from the church, as flames shot out of the building's charred roof. They watched firefighters scramble to battle the blaze that killed two firefighters and injured eight people. And some were praying. "This church is a family," said Joseph Brocter, 70, a church member for 55 years.

The pews were stuffed with the business suits and the rowhouse guys. Their common bond was Frank Rizzo. Yesterday, they came to the Cathedral of Ss. Peter and Paul for a Mass commemorating the one-year anniversary of his death. Rizzo died last summer trying to recapture the mayoral title for the third time. About 1,000 people jammed the hour-long noontime service at which the Rev. Msgr. Richard Skelly officiated. In the front row of the cathedral was Rizzo's family: his wife of 49 years, Carmella; his son, Frank Jr., known as Franny; his daughter Joanna and her husband, Joseph Mastronardo; his grandson, Joseph Mastronardo Jr. In the pew behind them sat his only surviving brother, former Fire Commissioner Joe Rizzo.

What we like: The church, also called Old Trappe Church, has remained almost unchanged for more than 250 years, and claims to be the oldest unaltered Lutheran church building in continuous use in the United States. Its spartan interior recalls a time when small, rural congregations gathered for worship. History: The sanctuary was built in 1743 and dedicated two years later. Henry Melchior Muhlenberg was the first regular pastor. His son, John Peter Muhlenberg, went on to serve as a general in the Continental Army.

George Layng Pew Jr., 77, of Villanova and Boothbay Harbor, Maine, a dedicated fund-raiser and volunteer for Yale University, died Wednesday, May 8, of a heart ailment at his Main Line home. Born in Bryn Mawr, Mr. Pew was a member of a famed Philadelphia family. He is a descendant of Thomas Pew, brother of Joseph Newton Pew Sr., who in 1890 founded Sun Oil Co. Mr. Pew traced his line to J. Edgar Pew, the founder's nephew and the former head of the production department at Sun, said his wife, Sally Chinn Pew. The son of George L. Pew, Sr., and Catharine Anspach Pew,  he graduated from the Brooks School in North Andover, Mass., in 1954 and Yale College in 1958.

The Pew Charitable Trusts plans to "streamline" its cultural grantmaking, eliminating a program for dispensing unrestricted operating funds and creating a program to assist organizations' long-term prospects by fostering audience growth, upgrading technology, and supporting future needs, according to Pew officials. Once approved by the board of trustees, all regular arts and culture grantmaking will be consolidated within the Pew Center for Arts and Heritage, a quasi-independent unit of the $6 billion charity.

In a report that asserts America's competitive position in clean energy is lagging, the Pew Charitable Trusts on Thursday advocated the adoption of a national clean-energy standard that sets milestones for deployment of renewable power. The Pew Clean Energy Program said the green-power industry would benefit from the adoption of a national standard similar to those adopted by 29 states, including Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Delaware. Renewable-energy portfolio standards require utilities to assure that a fixed percentage of electricity is generated from clean-energy sources.

NEW YORK - For the first time in its history, the United States does not have a Protestant majority, according to a new study. One reason: The number of Americans with no religious affiliation is on the rise. The percentage of Protestant adults in the U.S. has reached a low of 48 percent, the first time that Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life has reported with certainty that the number has fallen below 50 percent. The drop has long been anticipated and comes at a time when no Protestants are on the U.S. Supreme Court and the Republicans have their first presidential ticket with no Protestant nominees.

Megawords. It's a mega-word. It's two Philly artists engaged since 2005 in a long-running "experimental media project. " Which is what, exactly? A whirling world of art installations, projects, and events. An abandoned newsstand, converted to distribute their magazines. An old storefront, turned into an artistic event space. The future may bring films, Web stuff, apps. At the heart, there's a print magazine that comes out at least twice a year and does unprecedented things. Megawords is its own mega-world - a world that has come to a big turn.

The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage has awarded fellowships to 13 area artists. The $60,000 awards are given annually in recognition of achievement and the artistic potential latent in the funds. Among the winners this year are four composers and musicians, two choreographers, three visual artists, two poets, a photographer and a filmmaker. The 2012 Pew fellows are: Filmmaker Deron Albright, who was awarded a Fulbright Senior Scholar Fellowship to Ghana in 2008, where he lived with his family for a year and filmed his first feature film, The Destiny of Lesser Animals; Instrumentalist and composer Marshall Belford Allen, an active member of the Sun Ra Arkestra for more than 50 years, who has directed the jazz group since 1995, following the death of Sun Ra; Daniel Blacksberg, a trombonist and composer whose work reaches from jazz to klezmer; Visual artist Alex Da Corte, who gathers detritus and consumables into assemblages and videos; Meg Foley, a choreographer who has been inserting unexpected performance into daily life for the past few years, creating dance at the same time every day, no matter the circumstance; Pianist and composer Matthew Mitchell, whose work synthesizes a wide range of electronic, acoustic, composed and improvised music; Visual artists Dan Murphy and Anthony Smyrski, who work together as the artist duo Megawords, creators of installations and print materials; Greg Osby, jazz saxophonist...

The Pew Charitable Trusts has announced a number of grants in the arts, inluding $831,000 to eight cultural organizations to enhance management, $873,000 to seven theaters, presenters and stage performers, and $2.1 million in operating support to 10 area cultural groups. Descriptions of the management grants can be found on the website of the Pew Center for Arts & Heritage here: www.philly.com/pewmanage For a descriptions of the theater grants, go to the Pew center's website here: www.philly.com/pewtheater The operating grants can be found here: www.philly.com/pewoperate    - Stephan Salisbury

The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage has announced nearly $1.8 million in grants in recent weeks for exhibitions and local heritage projects. The Pew Exhibitions Initiative, an arm of the center, will be providing more than $1.1 million for exhibitions and planning by seven organizations. The Institute of Contemporary Art received $250,000 for the first major museum show devoted to Los Angeles installation artist Jason Rhoades, who died in 2006. The Michener Art Museum received $250,000 toward mounting "Paul Evans: Crossing Boundaries and Crafting Modernism.

Nearly two years after the Federal Reserve began requiring banks to get customers' permission before subjecting them to controversial overdraft practices, many account-holders are still surprised when they are charged overdraft fees for debit-card purchases or ATM withdrawals that could simply have been declined, says a new study financed by the Pew Charitable Trusts. The Pew study found that more than half of those hit with overdraft fees did not believe they had opted in to the policies, which enable banks to approve purchases or withdrawals for customers short of funds and then charge them fees for the transactions.

Here's what's happening on the plugged-in side of the digital divide: an extraordinarily swift change in how people are reading books and other media, driven by the rapid acceptance of tablets and e-readers. More than one in five Americans say they have read a book in electronic form during the last 12 months, according to study to be published Thursday by the Pew Internet and American Life Project. Nearly 3 in 10 adult Americans now own at least one device designed for electronic reading - either an e-reader such as the Amazon Kindle or a tablet such as Apple's iPad.