For their senior project, Jenna Fanselau and Reuben Herbel, recent civil engineering graduates from Walla Walla University, 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 one-day church structures house congregations in mission fields worldwide. 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 would not only allow for a quality structure to be erected but would also allow for future expansion as needed.

Working closely with their technical advisor, Louie Yaw, WWU professor of engineering, Fanselau and Herbel began with sketches. After several months of evaluating their design, they eventually landed on a T-shaped structure that could easily be constructed 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 communicated closely with the Maranatha team, 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's vice president of projects, “and am glad 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,” said Fanselau. “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 must 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 to Maranatha so the one-day church redesign can be used in the organization's future builds.

To learn more about the WWU engineering department, visit wallawalla.edu/engineering. 

— Stacy Wisener is a Walla Walla University Relations student writer.