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Lead Pastor Keith Gilliam of Living Hope Church in Lenoir, North Carolina, in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains, is beyond content. The house of worship he leads is serving his neighbors and inviting in people he’s never met before.
“It’s helping us,” Gilliam says of the church’s new facility that had its grand opening at the end of October 2022. “We see it as a tool that allows us to minister to more people in our community.”
Whereas his church’s original building held about 390, this one holds 1,100.
“It’s one of the larger sanctuaries in our community (Lenoir has a population of just over 18,000). So now we do two services instead of three, and our public school system uses our facility for special events, as well as so many others in the community,” Gilliam states.
“It tells our story through design; it’s very welcoming,” the pastor adds.
Design intent and intricacies
In a facility architecturally designed by Talley and Smith Architecture, based in Shelby, North Carolina, and constructed by general contractor Beam Construction of Cherryville, North Carolina, many elements converged.
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“My focus is lending a skilled ear, much like a psychologist—as well as a gardener—to deep dive into both their story and their community … considering what will best fit and thrive within the nutrients of their soil,” shares Lisa Masteller, owner/designer of SASS & Co., Raleigh, NC.
Project design player Lisa Masteller of SASS & Co., a boutique hospitality design firm that provided the overall concept and management for Living Hope Church, shared this about her company’s role: “My focus is lending a skilled ear, much like a psychologist—as well as a gardener—to deep dive into both their story and their community … considering what will best fit and thrive within the nutrients of their soil.”
“The design aspects lend themselves to building relationships, so people don’t have to rush away from a service. Instead, they can spend time with one another.”
—Keith Gilliam, Lead Pastor, Living Hope Church, Lenoir, NC
As part of this process of getting to know the client and understand their hopes for a new church building, Masteller says she must help get to the crux of who they are, bringing out their individual identity. “Once that has been established,” she notes, “we nurture both [the] visual and feel throughout the entire design of [a] church’s space.”
She says of SASS & Co.’s work upfront, “Churches come to us with a location [for their physical church building], and we start at the most simplistic thing: their name and logo.”
Masteller and team, which includes her husband, Kurt, an expert in 3D visualization, work on branding a church from there, identifying the color story and key graphic components to craft a consistent and compelling story.
“Even the hints of lines or curves in a given logo,” she says, for instance, “can easily be creatively introduced within the design and architecture of a space.”
In other words, the highly distinctive placemaking of the project begins to unfold, giving Masteller a basic intuitive roadmap from which to approach every other professional and trade that steps into a project.
Masteller describes some of the elements at Living Hope Church as a fusion between the original church’s representation of basic, beautiful, and traditional Christianity, with a marriage to the ministry’s desired contemporary thrust.
“Even the hints of lines or curves in a given logo can easily be creatively introduced within the design and architecture of a space.”
—Lisa Masteller, Owner/Designer, SASS & Co., Raleigh, NC
“Based off the tonality and tempo of our client,” as she puts it, “I knew I wanted to bring a nod to the iconic Christian elements and modernize that intentionality.”
One detail with a nod to both past and future, for instance, was an 8-inch by 8-inch mosaic tile featuring a cross pattern which was carried over into the overall project’s larger design scheme.
Living Hope Church faces forward
The exterior architectural design of Living Hope Church is reminiscent of an airport, to Masteller, and speaks of a destination with new places to go.
So in SASS & Co.’s design approach, they treated it almost like a hub of transit.
“If you pull back and take a broad look at the relationship many Americans have within the church, we come for two reasons: to be together and to know God,” Masteller notes. “And so the environment we create must be conducive to these two factors. We, as humans, need areas of contemplative thinking, as well as the occasional meal together. We want to make sure that we never [miss] an opportunity for conversation. People need time. People need space. And we want to provide a place that invites that.”
In Gilliam’s mind and in the eyes of the local congregation in Lenoir, this critical gathering space is clearly present in the incarnation of the new Living Hope.
In a highly traveled new coffee shop, for example, seating is ample and comfortable, and on the walls, SASS & Co. highlighted Living Hope’s global emphasis, as well. Coffee cups in the space signify each of the countries the ministry serves, as Gilliam says.
In the welcoming lobby where people gather, Living Hope’s story is there as an introduction for those who enter—with its core values displayed prominently on the walls.
For SASS & Co.’s part, Gilliam notes, “There’s great detail in every aspect. It’s warm and inviting, and we were looking to achieve that. The design aspects lend themselves to building relationships, so people don’t have to rush away from a service. Instead, they can spend time with one another.”
With Living Hope Church doing its work globally, plus looking to plant churches domestically, Gilliam notes, the story must stretch even further, and AVL components help to achieve that goal.
Gilliam and his staff chose XL Media out of Columbia, South Carolina, to handle the needs of their contemporary sanctuary, services, and streaming.
“We are storytellers, who happen to [tell] the greatest story of all time.”
—Lisa Masteller, Owner/Designer, SASS & Co., Raleigh, NC
As part of telling the church’s story, Masteller and her team worked alongside the AV experts, as well.
“A lot of money in a church goes into the sanctuary, and the AV team had problems with scarcity of equipment and long waits [to get the gear they needed and had specified],” Masteller describes of the challenging period in history, which added an extra six months to the project’s completion time frame.
All players involved, including Gilliam, held up one another and kept the faith during the wait.
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Living Hope's sanctuary seating, provided by Sauder Worship Seating, incorporates three slightly different hues with just enough color and texture to add warmth and depth to the room.
Sauder Worship Seating handled the sanctuary’s seating, which featured telescoping floors. Meantime, Masteller worked with Sauder’s team to select fabrics that fit the church’s style and personality.
By incorporating three slightly different hues, there was just enough use of color and texture to give the room the right amount of warmth and depth, she notes.
A work of worship, in progress
Heading into the future, Gilliam says Living Hope Church’s building is serving a bigger purpose.
“Multisites are part of our future,” the pastor notes. “And our goal [is also] to plant churches. We want to be able to duplicate the ministry of Living Hope in other cities.”
Masteller’s work in forging the new facility in Lenoir has set the stage for this growth, he notes, saying, “She certainly helped in highlighting our name, using a Scripture verse tool. In the coffee shop, she highlighted our global emphasis as a church. Our core values on the wall of the lobby show what’s important to us.”
In the aftermath of helping create a fresh face and place for Living Hope Church, Masteller concludes, “We are storytellers, who happen to [tell] the greatest story of all time.” A story her team strives to help amplify so that it will be remembered well into the future.
Learn more about Living Hope Church, Lenoir, NC
Living Hope Church’s Design & Building Players:
- SASS & Co., big-picture design, branding, project management, and interior detailing
- Talley & Smith Architecture, architectural design
- Beam Construction Co., general contractor
- Unrefined Designs, custom fabricator
- Corner Flooring Group, flooring
- Keb Designs, countertops
- XL Media Consulting, AVL design
- Sauder Worship Seating, worship space seating
