Pews in Church

I can\'t remember how to include a poll on the forum, so I\'ll just post my comment about the pews poll. I do believe pews are a hinderance to basic Orthodox worship, but the immediately removal might be more destructive than beneficial. Some say we shouldn\'t have pews because we shouldn\'t sit down during worhsip. Then why are there chairs for monastics and times for them (the kathismata - which actually means seated hymns) to sit? Should monastics be able to sit and not those of us in the world? And there is the point of process in Theosis - especially here in America where we have a higher conversion rate than in Orthodox countries. We shouldn\'t expect every convert to have aquired \"Orthodox legs\" as I like to call them and stand for over 3 hours. This takes training and time. There is also the fact that kneeling is not really a Sunday experience anyway, so pews don\'t really get in the way of a Sunday experience. After all, most of our people have become Sunday only attenders. This is obviously NOT the preferred, yet it is the reality of our current situation. In short (believe it or not this is my short version) to immediately remove pews from our churches should evolve out a communal uderstanding that they are in the way and then it makes sense to remove them. Until our worship actually develops past \"It come to church on Sunday to hear a good sermon\" and becomes more Orthodox, then eventually communities will see the benefit of removing them rather than the detriment to keeping them. My $0.02