By RaeAnn Slaybaugh
By 2015, Church of the Incarnation needed more space on its historic Dallas campus. That was clear.
Yet, when this demand was answered — with the completion of 60,000 square feet of added ministry space — the new spaces didn’t look “added on.” In fact, some people (me included) would’ve guessed they’d always been there.
This cohesion is very intentional.
Serving as COTI’s rector from 2008 until his retirement in 2022 (and overseeing the expansion project somewhere in the middle), the experience offered Rt. Rev. Anthony “Tony” Burton a vital lesson: how to plan for growth while honoring what the congregation already loves.
Lack of space for vital ministries is a familiar problem among growing churches — and Church of the Incarnation (COTI) in Dallas is no exception.
For this nearly 150-year-old church, however, the question of how to make room for ministry was complicated by its long history in the community. Read: the design would need to accommodate growth without erasing COTI’s history, architecture, and the identity that helped shape the congregation in the first place.
As former rector Bishop Burton and his cohorts on various building committees found out, the right path forward was indeed to expand — but not to start over.
Bigger footprint, same identity
In the years leading up to 2015 (and still today), COTI experienced significant growth in both its traditional and contemporary worship ministry, along with increasing need for expanded children’s education and gathering spaces. At the same time, the existing church — dedicated in 1954 — remained an important architectural and spiritual anchor for the congregation.
Completed in 2015 and spanning 60,000 square feet, the solution was to add a new, dedicated contemporary worship space (the Ascension Chapel) along with a three-story education building, a welcome center, and connecting spaces. Though new, these spaces would integrate as a natural continuation of the existing campus.
For Bishop Burton, this consistency was key.
Start with the ministry need
When Burton assumed leadership at COTI in 2008, the congregation wasn’t afraid of change. On the contrary, they were enthusiastic about it.
“There was a great deal of goodwill and cooperation,” Burton recalls. “People were actually asking for a capital campaign.”
This excitement was critical since the need for additional space was growing increasingly apparent.
Three years before Burton’s arrival, COTI launched a contemporary service. As attendance grew, the congregation moved that service from one small location to another — a memorial chapel, a rented Seventh-day Adventist church, and the parish hall, to name a few.
Meanwhile, the church’s traditional services had an established home in the larger existing sanctuary.
By all accounts, the campus was functioning — it just wasn’t ideal. To make it so would mean adding a dedicated contemporary worship environment, as well as more space for children’s ministries, plus a distinct welcome and reception area.
“Those are our bread and butter,” Burton shares. “We just needed space for all the growth.”
Further, he points out, it was important to recognize that the building project would do more than create a more impressive facility; it would accommodate the most pressing ministry needs.
“Part of what we were thinking was that we needed to project growth into the future and build to accommodate it — not simply to manage the short-term need,” Burton explains “That involved a lot of research and support.”
In this respect, COTI’s chosen architecture firm, HH Architects, proved key and critical.
“The committees were examining and researching the best architectural firms in Dallas, and HH came up at the top of the list,” Burton recalls. “I think [our project] was a different approach for them, having studied the projects they’d done before. So, they were interested in this challenge and all-in.”
Although reputation was one crucial factor, Burton says the firm’s commitment to designing COTI-authentic spaces was just as important. True to form, the new buildings don’t immediately announce themselves as new. In fact, it can be difficult to separate the existing spaces from the added ones.
To start, the project was deliberately organized along McKinney Avenue, placing the fellowship and education
spaces between the existing church and Ascension Chapel. A connecting corridor helped tie the various components together. The overall effect is unity — which, as Burton emphasizes, was wholly intentional.
“By placing the new spaces that way, people wouldn’t feel as though we were two churches sharing space,” he says. “Instead, we’re one parish family with different services.”
Church of the Incarnation (COTI):
Year established: 1878
Staff — full- and part-time: 100
Average attendance: 1,300 (estimated)
Beyond bricks and mortar
In designing the new spaces at COTI, it was important that their architecture complement the existing church rather than competing with it. To ensure this, HH Architects worked with the congregation to develop Gothic Revival-style additions that echoed important architectural elements of the historic campus. For example, the new chapel features traditional slate flooring and Gothic-inspired lighting, while the education and welcome areas incorporate related design elements.
Burton himself was a fount of knowledge to draw upon. His familiarity with — and appreciation for — Gothic Revival church architecture is evident in the chapel’s and reception building’s ceilings, for instance. Here, the use of open-timber beams drew inspiration from Westminster Hall in London and creates a visual relationship between the new spaces.
Burton’s fondness for this architectural style goes beyond aesthetics; for him, the most recognizable elements of Gothic Revival church design communicate something about how the congregation understands worship.
Rather than taking a “consumerist, secular view” of the buildings — that they’re purely functional — Burton points out that that’s not how Episcopalians or Anglicans have traditionally thought about church design.
“I’ve always thought that there was an important connection between the music of the church, the architecture of the church, and the liturgy of the church,” he says. “So, I was interested not just in theology per se, but how that gets taught and informs the souls of the worshipers through the architecture.”
A tall (but not impossible) order
Rather than trying to create a contemporary interpretation of a traditional style, Burton’s best advice for leaders of historic or architecturally significant churches is to be “absolutely Draconian” in a few areas of a building project.
“First, I’d tell them to be very rigorous in terms of getting the proportions right,” he explains. “I would always recommend using models of very successful older churches. Otherwise, you can end up with a sort of 1970s homage to Gothic revival, which defeats the purpose.”
Case in point: a contemporary church designed in 1975 looks much different than a contemporary church designed today.
“It’s very subtle,” Burton explains. “Remember avocado-colored appliances in the 1970s? Within 15 years, we just said, Ah, that’s so out of date. Was it their color? No one really knows.
“It’s like that with church design, too — kind of imperceptible, at the time you’re building, that it’s not authentically Gothic Revival. But because its proportions are not based on authentic Gothic churches, it just looks like dated pastiche.”
Instead — as COTI’s new spaces prove — it’s possible to borrow Gothic arches, stonework or other recognizable elements and, with authentic proportion, create spaces that are both beautiful and meaningful.
Don’t lead the project alone
Although Burton was the senior leader when COTI undertook the project, he is quick to correct the impression that the building program was his personal undertaking.
“It wasn’t true,” he says. “We had wonderful committees — people in the congregation, lots of enthusiasm, lots of participation.”
Critically, he adds, the HH Architects team was the ideal building partner for the project.
“They were really fun to work with — so great and so accommodating and so interested and engaged,” he recalls. “And I think that they actually had fun. We worked very well together.”
Remember what the building is for
Maybe the most compelling lesson from COTI is also the hardest to quantify — that beauty has a place in the life of a church.
“A well-designed church proclaims the gospel in stone and glass,” Burton says. “At night, if you look at a church with lovely stained-glass, the windows are just kind of black. But in the daytime, the light comes beaming in, and it’s a symbol of divine grace.
“So, God is with us in church. We’re not spectators.”
Perhaps most importantly, Burton says, design communicates what the church believes about the people who gather there. With its height, mystery, light and connection to centuries of Christian worship, Gothic architecture can remind worshipers that the architecture doesn’t provide all the answers.
“You can’t sit anywhere in the church and see everything,” he says. “There’s always lots of mystery and suggestions that are just out of view.
“That speaks very much to the providence of God: how He is working in your life, and in the world around you at any given moment, is not all revealed to you,” Burton explains. “A lot is revealed in the scriptures, but in terms of your life, personally — how it will end, what path is God leading you on — it isn’t obvious.
“So, it’s ‘architecture for adults,’ in a way,” he concludes. “If you’re a new Christian and you’re 16, 17, you might think you can learn everything from the Bible and that everything’s an open book to you. This type of architecture says, no, no, no. God has His own plans, and He doesn’t reveal them to you until the right time.”
