"But when you pray, go into a room by yourself, shut the door, and pray to your Father, who is there in the secret place." (Matthew 6:6)

There are horizontal and vertical aspects of religion. The horizontal is man's outreach to man; the vertical is man's upreach to God and God's downreach to man: aspiration and grace.

The practical embodiment of the horizontal concept of religion is that the physical structure of most Protestant Church edifices is made of many, gathered together in corporate worship; the individual is overshadowed.

And, while the worth of private prayer is extolled in many a sermon, one often looks in vain within most church edifices for a room for private prayer alone.

The Oratorium at Messiah is a small, enclosed shrine...a secret and private place for you to withdraw for prayer.

Located as a free-standing building in the front garden of the Congregational Church of the Messiah, our Oratorium (late Latin, meaning "a place for solitary orison") blends architecturally with its adjoining larger parent structures that make up Messiah. The Oratorium is a presence in itself, its small dimensions expressing its purpose as a place of worship for one person or perhaps a couple.

To provide such a place is not to make a means of escape from reality. Actually it is to open a door to reality...an entrance denied to urbanized society-entangled man who cannot go, as did Christ to a solitary desert place to hold dialogue with God.

The Oratorium of Messiah makes it possible for members, parishioners and strangers to put into immediate practice the words of Christ: "But when you pray, go into a room by yourself, shut the door, and pray to your Father who is there in the secret place."
(Matthew 6:6)

Dr. Harry Butman, the guiding force in conceiving and building the Oratorium of Messiah, has written: "This small shrine, standing on the corner of a busy avenue in a sprawling, kinetic metropolis, in the midst of great space complexes, underneath the roar of climbing jets, will offer, we are persuaded, an answer to a cry of man. A Christian man may not lawfully consider himself pure above the world: he must engage and involve himself, under penalty of living less than a whole life. But he must not be absorbed by the world or live as if there is nothing more than this world.

"A contemporary form of the wayside shrine of the middle ages, where the traveler could kneel and find force to walk his pilgrimage and wage his warfare well, is a psychic necessity for today when paths are dim and dangers many. Our place of prayer is such a (wayside shrine) given shape and substance."

The Oratorium is open and unlocked for the free use of any individual Christian worshiper, be he a member of Messiah, a parishioner, or a stranger, during daylight hours every day in the year.

Members and friends of the Congregational Church of the Messiah may be issued a key permanently. The key may be used by its authorized owner to enter the Oratorium during hours of the night.

God welcomes you: sense his presence when you enter the Oratorium of Messiah.

The single room, with its cross, altar and two 40-inch pews/kneelers, all illumined by a floor-to-ceiling stained glass window and soffit lighting were deemed by the architect and Messiah's Memorial Committee to be ideal in psychological environment for a single worshiper: neither large enough to overwhelm nor small enough to feel too confining to the individual.

This webpage is dedicated to HARRY R. BUTMAN, D.D. now Pastor Emeritus of THE CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH OF THE MESSIAH and to the members of the Messiah Memorials Committee of 1963-4-5 all of whom made a dream a reality with the completion of the Oratorium at Messiah in 1964.

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