Walla Walla University Senior Project Aids in One-Day Church Redesign

For their senior project, Jenna Fanselau and Reuben Herbel, Walla Walla University (WWU) recently graduated civil engineering majors, created a redesign of a one-day church for Maranatha Volunteers International, a nonprofit organization that builds worship and education structures all over the world for communities in need.

A one-day church is exactly what it sounds like: a church structure built in one day. One of Maranatha’s most common projects, the current design of the structure has proved to be ideal for smaller congregations. However, such structures have easily been outgrown in many communities by Adventist ministry growth, which has presented a scalability challenge for such congregations that wish to continue growing.

Fanselau heard about this project during her junior year from a family friend who works at Maranatha and had expressed the need for a redesign. After partnering with Herbel and talking to their advisors, the team committed to the project, taking on the challenge of creating a new one-day church redesign that not only would allow for a quality structure to be erected but also would allow for future expansion as needed.

Working closely with their technical advisor, Louie Yaw, WWU engineering professor, Fanselau and Herbel began with sketches. After spending several months evaluating their design, they eventually selected a T-shaped structure that could easily be made of materials accessible to Maranatha when working internationally. The design also allows existing one-day church structures to be converted into T-shaped structures when congregations outgrow their current church.

Throughout their project they kept in close communication with the team at Maranatha, who would review the redesign and send feedback to Fanselau and Herbel, expressing their excitement for the new model. “I did enjoy working with Jenna,” said Kyle Fiess, Maranatha vice president of projects, “and am glad that she reached out to see if we could provide a real-world project that she could use for her coursework. We are excited to see young engineers using their skills to further mission work.”

“It’s exciting that we’re able to do projects like this, working with nonprofits,” Fanselau said. “WWU has a really great [engineering] department and really great professors. They’ll put in the time to help you, and that’s been big.” Herbel noted that Yaw was one of their biggest assets for the project.

While Fanselau and Herbel satisfied the requirements for their senior project, additional steps still need to be taken before the design can be implemented in the mission field. Fanselau is currently in contact with Maranatha and is in the process of sending over the package of materials she and Herbel made for Maranatha’s structural engineering team.

Once the materials have been reviewed, Fanselau will meet with the team to go over the design and discuss further steps toward fully transferring the project over to Maranatha so the one-day church redesign can be utilized in the organization’s future builds.

The original version of this story was posted on Northwest Adventists.