Facility Tour: Willow Creek Community Church Part 1

In 2004 I went to Willow Creek Community Church in Barrington, Illinois for the Volunteer Revolution Conference. I was happy to go, as Willow Creek was actually my home church back in the days when I lived nearby. But they had recently built a brand new auditorium — which was beautiful! Since I took so many pictures, I am splitting this into two posts.

This first one has to do with the lobby and hallway areas.Here’s how the outside looked.

Clear signage… the place was huge!

I liked the waterfall outside.

The new auditorium had a bit of a more modern look to the outside.

When I walked in, my first thought was, “I feel like I’m in an airport.” You don’t find huge lobbies like this in California as much because the weather out here is nicer. But Illinois is a different story, especially in the winter! You need lots of space for people to be warm and out of the elements.

There was a large stairway in the middle of the lobby.

Here’s how the lobby looked from overhead. To the left are the entrance doors. Straight ahead is the coffee shop.

Here’s a wonderfully blurry picture. I don’t know why these pictures are blurry… maybe my camera wasn’t set right or I didn’t know how to use manual settings. Who knows? It was 8 years ago.

A glimpse inside of the coffee shop.

A nice warm feel!

The counter where you order.

An area for seating.

And back out in the hallway. There were computer stations to go to sign up for stuff or look for info, and a monitor overhead that had announcements.

An overhead view.

And a close-up view.

On the other side was the entrance to the auditorium.

There were benches along the wall to sit. I could see just walking from one end of the building to the other could be exhausting, given how huge the place was!

The lobby was two stories tall.

There was an escalator next to the stairs.

This was my favorite part — a falling water feature!

The water looked almost like glowing lines.

Here’s the other side. You can see the water falling down into a black wall.

There’s the bottom of the black wall, ending in pool under the stairs.

…And spouting water, with a ledge to sit next to. What a great place to sit and read your Bible if no one’s around!

There were also computer monitors in other areas. I’m not sure what they were for.

And monitors in various locations to communicate what was happening.

It was such a beautiful setting that served many functions well — traffic flow, places for people to sit and connect, and communications kiosks and monitors for people to get information they needed.

Next, Part 2…

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~ by Angela Yee on February 17, 2011.