more on church buildings

A few years back I think some congregations got tired of spending such a big chunk of Sunday's contribution on their facilities when the building was used only three times a week. They wanted their facilities to be more practical and usable. After all, the church building is not holy or sacred. That's when auditoriums became gymnasiums and they started adding family life centers. The purpose was to get the most out of their buildings. They also thought they could attract more people to the building for evangelism. Think about having a basketball game after Sunday evenings services where the community is invited. I think they had a good idea I'm just not sure the implementation was right. Instead of revamping their use of the building maybe they needed to revamp their understanding of the building altogether.

William Willimon once quipped (I've forgotten where) that the church needs to be the church. It isn't an entertainment company, it isn't in the business of doing things that the world can provide. It is here to be the church. Mainline denominational churches in the 60s tried to be more socially relevant. Certainly some of the issues they dealt with are important to us as Americans and as individual Christians, but they became so focused on those issues that they lost their relevance as people serving Jesus here on the earth. Their evangelism suffered as a result. Willimon's book, Good New For Exiles, deals with some of the results of this focus (maybe that's where I read the quote I mentioned earlier). Some of the "conservative" evangelical churches today are trying the same tactic but with global warming and poverty. My guess is that these issues will dominate their agenda and they will become less relevant as a spiritual community.

We need to ask whether or not church buildings, social issues, or anything else takes us away from being the community of God. If we focus too much on this world and its issues then we become less than we should be. Perhaps the environment of a church building feeds our need to be relevant whether through social issues or through events designed to attract the community. If we are not willing to give up our buildings, perhaps we need some different thinking about its use. I don't like making it an exercise center or a place where we discuss social issues (although sometimes social issues do need to be discussed in reference to how we are affected as the church). We are the people of God and we gather to take the Lord's Supper, preach, worship, and tell the story of how God sent His Son to this earth to save us from the coming judgment. All that we do should be focused on that. All else is a distraction from our spiritual purpose.