Friday, May 16, 2008
Buildings
OK, this is not going to be a building rant, but I do think we need to see what we did wrong concerning buildings in our movement so we do not repeat the same mistakes. I suspect we have spent more on buildings than we have on missions, benevolence, and evangelism. The critical mistake we made was believing we had to have a building to establish identity and credibility. I think we had to collectively know in our hearts that buildings were not the Biblical way to identify ourselves, but it became our practice in this culture.
I also think the building boom was wrapped up in our "wrong side of the tracks" mentality. Nice buildings showed we had "arrived" as an important entity in our city. However, Christianity always has grown faster on the "wrong" side of the tracks. We moved away from our base, we took pride in our buildings, and we quit growing.
Once we built buildings, they became the center of our church life. We even refer to buildings as the church. Very unbiblical concept. Our buildings centered on a large auditorium for collective worship, so that became our focus: Sunday morning large corporate worship became the core of Christianity for many people. And because of the way we designed the auditorium, the sermon became the core piece of our worship, thus elevating the preacher to the most important role in worship.
After the auditorium, we added classrooms, again using them mostly one or two times per week. So we invested enormous sums of money in buildings rarely used for a function that is only one aspect of our lives as Christians. And to make it worse, we continued to foster the building as church attitude by thinking it was a holy place. So we fought about whether we could eat in a "holy" building, so there was quite a bit of resistance to the idea of fellowship halls at first. But we could have a bathroom in the main church building. Draw your own conclusion here.
So what should we have done? If we have to have buildings, make them functional places for use every day. Open them to the community. As we try to do at Southern Hills, make them be a community front porch. And quit building larger and larger auditoriums. Go to multiple services and use chairs, not pews, so worship can be centered on things other than the performers, oops, leaders up front. If you want spend money of buildings, start with fellowship halls. At least we can use those for fellowship, evangelism, and service.
Well, maybe this was a rant against the mistakes we have made in the past with our buildings.
So tell me, what do you think about our philosophy of buildings? And how do they impact you in terms of worship, evangelism, and fellowship?
I also think the building boom was wrapped up in our "wrong side of the tracks" mentality. Nice buildings showed we had "arrived" as an important entity in our city. However, Christianity always has grown faster on the "wrong" side of the tracks. We moved away from our base, we took pride in our buildings, and we quit growing.
Once we built buildings, they became the center of our church life. We even refer to buildings as the church. Very unbiblical concept. Our buildings centered on a large auditorium for collective worship, so that became our focus: Sunday morning large corporate worship became the core of Christianity for many people. And because of the way we designed the auditorium, the sermon became the core piece of our worship, thus elevating the preacher to the most important role in worship.
After the auditorium, we added classrooms, again using them mostly one or two times per week. So we invested enormous sums of money in buildings rarely used for a function that is only one aspect of our lives as Christians. And to make it worse, we continued to foster the building as church attitude by thinking it was a holy place. So we fought about whether we could eat in a "holy" building, so there was quite a bit of resistance to the idea of fellowship halls at first. But we could have a bathroom in the main church building. Draw your own conclusion here.
So what should we have done? If we have to have buildings, make them functional places for use every day. Open them to the community. As we try to do at Southern Hills, make them be a community front porch. And quit building larger and larger auditoriums. Go to multiple services and use chairs, not pews, so worship can be centered on things other than the performers, oops, leaders up front. If you want spend money of buildings, start with fellowship halls. At least we can use those for fellowship, evangelism, and service.
Well, maybe this was a rant against the mistakes we have made in the past with our buildings.
So tell me, what do you think about our philosophy of buildings? And how do they impact you in terms of worship, evangelism, and fellowship?
