MESSIAH LUTHERAN CHURCH - Winnipeg, Manitoba

One of a number of religious buildings designed by Gaboury in the late 1960s, the Messiah Lutheran Church in Winnipeg was completed in 1968. In contrast to the flamboyant imaginativeness of the Precious Blood Church or the radical structural juxtapositions of St. Boniface Cathedral, the Messiah Lutheran Church is based on a rigorously linear concept, a classic simplicity of design serving Gaboury's aspiration to remove the division between clergy and communicants. Stark and simple in its exterior, the Messiah Lutheran Church was planned in three stages, each intended to be self-sufficient and architecturally whole in order to reflect the growth of the religious community, linking the worship, the fellowship and the educational aspects of the church in a seamless progression. Each specific liturgical function - confession, choir, the congregation in prayer, baptism, the Word, communion - was incorporated into the initial planning stages with each given its appropriate spatial expression while adhering to the pattern of advancement. Eliminating the separation between nave and sanctuary, and dispensing with complication of construction in order to emphasize the dramatic and mystical qualities of this progression, Gaboury intends to forge an "inseparable bond" within the church body to aid in the creation of a "priesthood of the laity" wherein communal feeling gives weight to ritual.

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