A missionary reporting his ministry matter-of-factly, embellished the story of his work with a tribe of people living in the simplest communal situation – houses of grass, diets of roots and animal/fish, sparse clothing. Many became Christians, and wanted a church as they discovered the biblical description of structures for worship. They learned they could make boards by digging a trench and using the long saw brought in by the missionary with one person above and one below pulling the saw. Hearing of the need, a church sent a small gas-powered saw to cut boards from the bountiful forest of trees. The enthusiasm was extraordinary. The people found that their faith grew as they built God’s house – to be superior to any building they had ever known in their village. It was done and the situation for the people improved in their natural experience as well as their spiritual. They insisted to the missionary that this must be the best they could do, so to honor God and their faith. They grew in numbers and faith. Culture advanced.
One of the problems faced by the eminent Jonathan Edwards was that the church that had meant so much to the Great Awakening in the American Colonies had fallen into some disrepair, especially with weathering boards and neglect of full maintenance on the structure. The details of sanctuary had lost the attention of the good people. What was the result, after great revivals? The congregation and Edwards began to have some tension. Edwards, with a large family, really needed an improved stipend, and the people needed to have balance in all matters for the church. The end of it was that Edwards resigned, and went to the Indians of western Massachusetts. From there he went to Princeton as president of the college we now know as Princeton University. One is impressed with his and other stories of the whole context of life, faith, worship, and church experience to untimely death. Edwards died from a contaminated inoculation.
Cities and villages once warmed in the meaning and sanctuary of their churches. Many communities had a law that no other building could be taller than the tallest church steeple in town. There was a beauty, a sense of presence, a witness of difference between the natural and the supernatural. Persons still go to historic churches of the past and exult in some elevated meaning. Leading writers have questioned the depth of even the regular membership of modern churches that have been turned into ordinary rooms, neutral walls and lights, shed of art and implied meanings. Many churches, like many business structures, have become boxes. Longtime appeals of church architecture and art have been signifcantly diluted.
That this is an important matter is verified in the amount of space Scripture gives to the building of three centers of worship in the Old Testament, and the presence of Jesus at 12 years of age in Jerusalem at the Temple and twenty plus years later so angry about the treatment of God’s house that he displays the only violence from him found in the Bible. The inspiration of the Temple to the people in both Testaments should say something to us, about a general disregard for some refinements. The people were given by God a uniformed (vestments) clergy. Note the description of Aaron’s public presentation of himself in leading the worship of God. This is generally retained in the Catholic Church in Christianity, but has been highly diluted in the Protestant arm. Some ritual, with all the instruments, will maintain the sense of other worldliness that the church is supposed to emit. It is likely helpful to modern life that the cemeteries have been moved away from the church yard, that some excesses have been dropped as unnecessary. We may be rather sure that the casualness that has arrived full blown in the 21st Century will cost us some impact for meaning on the life of the church. The future may rediscover the meaning of all things related to the life and ministry of the church. The movement to the asphalt jungles, cold metal, neutral glass, concrete surfaces, and substitution for architecture and the accoutrements of cities creating the illusion of mechanical life may cost dearly for human beings. Our churches are losing their have-to-be entered and seen factors that contribute to spiritual aspiration, to inspiring (attention getting) suggestions for the society as a whole, and faith persons in particular. Scripture keeps a balance in the matter, but there are hints that we may give more attention to our homes than the house of God. There is some loss in direction. *Mark W. Lee, Sr. — 2016, 2020