Around 7 a.m. on Sundays, a line starts forming in Dallas’ Design District for a worship service at an industrial warehouse-style building. By 9 a.m., several hundred people are gathered.
An hour later, when Upperroom’s service begins, almost 600 people have squeezed into the space on Manufacturing Street.
“You really have to want to come to Upperroom to get in,” said Michael Miller, lead pastor and founder of the non-denominational church rooted in Christianity.
The church, founded in 2010, will soon call a more spacious building on 2.5 acres in downtown Dallas’ Cedars neighborhood its new home. That Wall Street space will let the church more than double its capacity, accommodating nearly 1,600 people when completed in May.
The church started as a small prayer group in an upper room above a veterinarian clinic in Oak Lawn. As it grew, it kept the name as a reference to its original space and to where the Bible described the Last Supper taking place.
With an expansive membership now, church leaders knew they needed an architect familiar with designing spaces for large crowds.
They turned to Bryan Trubey, who led design teams for several decades at Dallas-based HKS and worked on notable sports facilities, including AT&T Stadium and Globe Life Field in Arlington and SoFi Stadium in suburban Los Angeles.
“Anytime you’re working on a space that is basically an assembly environment … it’s still a very similar thing from a functional standpoint,” said Trubey, who now works for architectural firm Overland Partners. “Cheering your team on and worshiping God are two different things in one way, but they have similar characteristics.”
For Upperroom’s new space, its worship leaders said they didn’t want to be spectators. They wanted to be in the action.
“So you feel like you’re surrounded by the worshipers,” Trubey said.
The interior uses many circular shapes, symbolizing the original church described in the Bible. The main worship room has a circular stage, haloed by a large ceiling light, and surrounded by chairs on the same level.
Upperroom has invested about $21 million in the building, said executive pastor Peter Slover. The church is conducting a fundraising campaign of $6 million in 60 days to finish off the job. Its Gofundme page shows $1.26 million raised so far.
On a typical weekend, Upperroom attracts 1,600 to 1,800 people to its services. Miller said at a time when younger generations are leaving the church, Upperroom’s primary demographic is Gen Z and millennials.
Its online presence is extensive — its Instagram account boasts nearly 360,000 followers. Its Spotify profile has almost 1.9 million listeners.
Johnathan Lewis, a prayer and worship leader at the church, said he considers Upperroom to be unique.
“I would call it wildness but it’s not weirdness,” he said. “There’s a certain freedom. It’s a beautiful expression from earth to heaven.”
The church hosts worship and prayer sessions called “corporate sets” at 6 a.m., noon and 6 p.m. on weekdays and three services on weekends. Upperroom’s YouTube channel shows its almost 180 weekly volunteers leading songs, prayer and dances.
With its Cedars location, Lewis said he hopes the church can bridge Dallas’ “unspoken divide” between its economically disparate north and south sides.
Miller said while many churches have moved to the suburbs, Upperroom felt “called to the urban downtown area.”
“You’re gonna have close to 90 hours of corporate prayer [a week],” Miller said. “So that alone, I think, is an incredible offering to the community of downtown South Dallas. I think prayer transforms people.”
Upperroom’s new campus can be a catalyst for change, he said.
“We want to establish a beachhead, claiming that this area, this land, can be transformed,” Miller said. “We see it more as almost an anchor point for future generations.”