Renovating a church can be a huge undertaking, but church communities have a major resource, beyond money, that they can bring to bear: the congregation. Father Prentice Dean, the pastor of The Church of St. Mary the Virgin in Arlington, TX, selected an innovative ceiling material and found that it brought his congregation together. He and his parishioners installed the ceiling themselves, replacing stained and yellowed mineral fiber panels with thermoformed ceiling panels that look like carved wood and create a welcoming warmth in the sanctuary.

St. Mary the Virgin was built around 1990 as an Episcopalian church. In 1994, the entire congregation converted to Roman Catholicism, but they were allowed to keep the building. It was a congregation of modest means that had limited the décor of the church’s interior to an almost spartan simplicity, and the white, 22-foot high ceiling gave the sanctuary a cavernous feeling.