The spaces offer room for perhaps two people comfortably but are said to be best visited alone. (The room at the Phillips, a former storage closet, is 6 feet wide by 7 feet deep and 10 feet high.) "There's a feeling you get inside the space that can't really described, " says Mr. Laib, a diminutive, almost fragile-looking man with a voice barely above a whisper.
For African Americans and a lot of Southern whites who are accustomed to a certain style of preaching, the thundering voice that drops to a whisper, the weaving of social issues with the theological, is common.