Church members had maintained a 24-hour prayer vigil since the arrests.
The projection room now serves as a 24-hour "prayer tower," and crutches and canes from faith healings line a wall in the lobby.
"We're not comfortable with them having a half-hour prayer session right before instructing people how to build shelters," an agency official said.
However, this cut no ice with the protesters outside, led in a 12-hour prayer vigil by Sister Mary Michael, 61.
On Tuesday, for his official inauguration, Mr. Scott will hold a two-hour prayer breakfast with no fewer than 10 speakers; an afternoon concert featuring the country singers Lee Greenwood and Rockie Lynne; and a parade befitting Disney World's home state.
Mr. Deaton and his followers, including Ms. Deaton, moved here from Texas three years ago to be close to the International House of Prayer, which draws tens of thousands of people from around the world to its 24-hour prayer hall in a former strip mall and to its university in nearby Grandview, a Kansas City suburb.
The congregation has grown so large that the main lunch-hour prayer on Fridays finds taxi drivers and street vendors, office workers and messengers, crammed together with barely enough room to exhale -- all to the unwelcome counterpoint of clanging heat pipes.
Deirdre McQuade, U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops' spokeswoman on abortion and similar issues, said the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception expects 20,000 Catholics, mostly young people, to join in a 14-hour prayer vigil that starts the night before the march.
Mr. Siegel was among the first to test the new rules yesterday, when he accompanied a group of 50 students and clergy from the Union Theological Seminary who gathered for a two-hour prayer vigil and protest on the City Hall steps.
