Towards an evangelical theology of place II: church buildings

Evangelicals are sometimes fond of saying that church buildings are really a nothing: rain shelters, more or less glorious.

God does not live in temples made by human hands. Absolutely.

But consider 2 things which give our buildings significance:

(1) Meaning and value are partly socially and historically constructed.

Which sounds fancy. What it means is that Elton John's glass or Elvis Presley's guitar are worth much more than any old cup or instrument to many people.

Say your church has been at the iconic, religious, cultural, physical heart of your village since AD 800 and that prayers have been offered there every day time out of mind. Does that make the building magic? Of course not. Does it physically change it? Probably only fairly minimally. Does it matter? I think any reasonable person would say it does. Even if it does not matter to the Evangelical preacher, he can be sure it matters to the villagers, even those who rarely attend!

Calvin would not want you to play ping pong on the Lord's Table, though it is just a table. Consider that.

(2) Neutrality is impossible.

Even an empty white box of a building has a significance and sends a message (maybe God hates stuff, or beauty, or something!). You building must have some sort of shape, so maybe a cross is not a bad one.

If you are Christian at all you need some kind of Table and you need to put it somewhere. You probably want a pulpit or lectern of some description.

So we need to think about this stuff.