Drawing by Kate Parrent, 1988Church Buildings
There was a short segment on the NBC national news Friday night about a “new” movement in American religious practice. It must have been a slow news day. The reporter described people choosing to meet in relatively small groups in “house churches.” Groups of twelve or fifteen people meet in someone’s home for Sunday worship. There’s nothing new about this practice, of course. It was the norm in the earliest days of Christianity. In the first centuries of the Christian movement, all Christians met for worship and fellowship in “house churches.
The practice has a lot to commend it. For one thing, it encourages, even demands, full and active participation from everyone present.
Meeting as a house church also eliminates the “overhead costs” of maintaining a physical “house of worship.” The pastor shepherding the group that was highlighted in the news segment said one woman had told him “she was tired of paying someone else’s light bill in addition to her own.” It is expensive to maintain a church building, or any building for that matter. Energy costs, maintenance, insurance.
Then there is the other issue of congregations that have lost their way by worshiping the Tiffany windows or the marble carved reredos or the Flentrop organ instead of worshiping Jesus. A church building is not always an asset to a faith community.
The church is the people, not the building. Do we even really need a building? The news report cited a recent Pew research study indicating that 9 % of American Protestants now worship solely in house churches. They have no church building.
As it turns out for me personally there was a deep poignancy of the timing of that news report, although I did not know it at the time.
Only a few hours before that news report was broadcast, late Friday afternoon, a church building that had been a very important part of my life was lost. The chapel at Virginia Seminary was destroyed by a devastating fire.
I worshiped in the seminary chapel with fellow members of the seminary community five days a week throughout my three years of seminary training. In addition, I did my field work (part time parish internship) at Immanuel Church on the Hill, a parish in Alexandria that has a special relationship with the seminary and holds one of its Sunday services in the seminar chapel. So for two years I also shared worship every Sunday in the seminary chapel with the people of Immanuel.
The pictures of the fire and its aftermath are heartbreaking. No one was hurt. No other buildings were damaged. They don’t know how it started. That’s one of those questions that we think is important, but really isn’t. It was an old building, consecrated in 1881; the interior was made almost entirely of wood.
The church is the people. The church is the life of the people. The church is the people, active. Our lives, our ministries, are the church. The church is not a building.
But church buildings have their value. Throughout the day yesterday I reflected on what church buildings can mean and be for us.
First, the buildings themselves can teach us, form us in faith. We do need to guard against dependence upon a building for our life of faith. We also need to guard against misdirecting our worship or reverence towards the building rather than God. But awe inspiring architecture can inspire awe towards the divine and lift our hearts Godwards. For centuries stained-glass windows have taught stories of faith to those who gathered beneath them. Here at St. John’s our windows inspire and teach about the exemplary lives of the saints.
The chapel at VTS had a large stained glass window that filled the wall behind and above the holy table. It portrayed Jesus speaking to his disciples who were assembled around him. The setting is Jesus’ final meeting with his disciples after his resurrection and before his ascension. Above the window in bold letters were Jesus’ Great Commission in words from Mark’s Gospel. “Go ye into all the world and preach the Gospel.” And thousands have. The window was destroyed, but those of us who worshiped there were formed and inspired by its message.
Here in this church building we look upon the risen Christ every time we gather for worship. The risen Christ, resurrected in joy and triumph. His arms are outstretched in a gesture that I have always interpreted as invitation and welcome. I hope that here in this church building we are being formed into resurrection people, people of new life and hope, reaching out our hands in welcome to others.
Church buildings themselves can teach and form us.
Second, church buildings are symbols of our connection to one another within community. It is Christ who connects us, but the building can be a symbol, a reminder. This is broadly true of many objects or settings; things can be symbols of unity or commonality for various groups of people. But it’s worth remembering that the church building can fill that function for us as a parish community. The building, after all, is where we gather to do the things we do together, as a community. It is the setting for our common life. So the building reminds and teaches us of the reality of our connection to one another in community.
That connection reaches beyond the times and occasions of our own individual experiences. This building symbolizes our connection to generations past and future.
Over the course of the last day, I have felt united to a company of people whom I have never met, whose names I do not know. I know only that they prayed and preached and cried and sang within the chapel at Virginia Seminary. It is, of course, the living Christ in whom we share true communion. But the building is a symbol of that communion. A reminder that, as Christians, we are never alone.
Finally, a church building is a container for the “fullness” of Christian life. For me I think this is a church building’s greatest gift, although perhaps the hardest to articulate. A building consecrated for worship is a sacred vessel into which we pour all of who we are. We leave nothing outside. No part of life is not holy. We bring all that we are, good and bad, warts and wonders, hopes and fears, into this holy place. And all of it is touched and blessed by God.
The rector of a parish is charged with keeping the parish records. Technically, they are the records of the parish community, but they are also the records of worship services within a church building. And those records recount the fullness of human life. Services of baptism and confirmation, of soul sickness and reconciliation, of matrimony and death. But this building holds even more than that. This holy vessel holds all of the prayers offered, the human struggles played out, the relationships lived.
When I think of all that happened in the chapel at Virginia—during worship and at other times… The walls contained times tension and whimsy, of private conversation and public celebration, anger, fear, hope, peace. When we bring our whole lives to worship, the sacred space of the building reminds us that our whole lives are lived in God’s presence.
So I grieve the loss of a church building. Many of us do, scattered throughout the church throughout the world.
Maybe my loss today has reminded you of losses of your own. I’m sorry. Give them to God, your loss and your grief. As he met with the seminary community after the fire, the Dean of the Seminary, Dean Markham, prayed that we might give our memories to God to hold in trust for our eternal life. I think that’s a wonderful perspective. Remember: good memories are what generate grief. Give your memories to God, entrust them to God. God will hold them in trust so that we may cherish them eternally.
Maybe you’ve been reminded of fires that have affected you directly or indirectly. Forgive me, but I don’t want to hear about them.
I do bid your prayers for everyone who has been affected by this fire. The seminary community and the people of Immanuel Church-on-the-Hill will be OK. They are strong in will and faith. But this is a difficult time, especially I imagine for those who are there now. The window in the seminary chapel was inscribed with the Great Commission from Mark’s Gospel. In Matthew’s gospel, the Great Commission concludes with these words from Jesus to his followers. “And remember, I am with you always to the end of the age.” I cannot imagine a community more confident in that assurance than the staff and students of Virginia Seminary.
The church is not a building.
And I still say, as I have before, “going to church” is a bizarre and meaningless phrase. Church is not a building. It is not a destination we visit from time to time. “Living as church” is the better perspective for us as Christians. But church buildings can help us live as church.
This morning, I hope you will pause and thank God for all the church buildings that have enriched your faith throughout your life, the buildings that have taught you and helped form you as a Christian. Thank God for those church buildings that have helped you build and remember your connection to the broader Christian community that is the Body of Christ. And thank God for those holy spaces, sacred vessels, into which you have poured all the trials and joys of living and known yourself to be blessed as a beloved child of God.
