Rock Church

The story, as our tour guide told it, was that a new church was planned in the north section of the city of Helsinki. Residents had no complaint about the location of the church but were not happy if the facility were to be a tall building with high visibility. And the area where the Church was planned was an area of large rocky formations. Sounds like a real controversy until you arrive to see the result.

Apparently, everyone won in this situation as they blasted and dug the Church out from inside the rock. Called the Rock Church, this Lutheran Church runs a full slate of services every week in Finnish and also offers a 2:00 PM service in English. If our tight tour schedule had allowed it, I would have been most pleased to attend that service. If occasion sends us back to Helsinki on a Sunday in the future, the service will be pre-planned on our schedule.

What they have built is a beautiful hollow grotto in the rock. We will look at a couple more photos from the Rock in the next post.