The great barrier of entering a church

We often think going into a church will be hard for people, but 85% of people entered a church last year.

Cathedrals: public sacred space?

As I understand it (which is very little) the medieval cathedral was a funny mix of the sacred and the secular. Cathedrals still are, you might say.

Cathedrals would have been one of the few large buildings in a city and would be a meeting place as well as a place for divine worship.

It's good to have buildings that are explicitly set aside for the glory of God, but I don't think that means that they can never be used for other lawful purposes.

Cathedrals have more of a public character than most other churches where there's a "private" more family feel.

As far as we have the resources and the opportunities, and if we've nothing better to do, let's open up our church buildings.

Cathedral or warehouse?

What type of church building would you ideally like? I'd much rather a cathedral than a converted warehouse, cinema, school or theatre.

I think a specially designed building can affect a mood and send messages. Our buildings are more than rain shelters. That's one reason we have architects! Our homes and our church buildings (and every other building) can be built to the glory of God, but in different ways.

Some evangelicals often claim that non-Christians find it hard to enter (churchy) church buildings. Perhaps. But I've frequently been on holiday and day trips with non-Christian family who are very keen to visit ecclesiastical buildings of all sorts - admittedly for touristy reasons, but they seem to have no problem with entering church buildings as such.

My non-Christian family would like a lovely church building, and I don't think they are hugely weird in that. Many people would like to get married in a nice church, for example. Maybe you'd say that a building might distract them or that they'd like it for the wrong reasons, but there you have it.

If we say some people don't like to go to churchy buildings, we should also remember that some people didn't like school or don't enjoy theatre or cinema and so on, so is there such a thing as a neutral space? And would that be a good thing?

Lighten up your church

I must admit that I was skeptical about our recent church lighting project. I could see well enough and it cost an awful lot of money that I thought perhaps could be used better for preaching the gospel.

Having said that, however, I was very pleasently surprised by the results. The church building seems much lighter! It's given things a much more friendly, lively, welcoming, vibrant feel, I think. Looking back, I'd say the church was a bit dark and gloomy before - even perhaps a little oppressive in contrast to the new - but I'd not especially noticed it then.

The lights are dimmable and more flexible now.

There are noticable spotlights on the table, the font and the pulpit. Worth thinking about whether you want these and what messages they might send. It's perhaps especially odd for us to have the font super-illuminated when we never use it!

The new lighter light does show up the need for a spring clean (in the inacessible heights) and a lick of paint though....