We must learn and remember that the structures we build have influence in our lives, sometimes decisive influence. They represent us, our thoughts and values, our wealth and poverty, our perceptions and art, our everyday confidence in our life existence and purpose. We are informed that the peasantry of the middle ages was lifted by the massive cathedrals, their beauty, sense of heaven, the lift of color in the windows, the suggestion of equality among the people who worshipped there. From the ruins of old buildings, the archaeologists reconstruct lives of people who lived there centuries ago. Athens and Rome gained something of an advanced society with its structures – as on the Acropolis. We can almost see the perceptive orators standing a bit above the crowd, keeping them mesmerized with their oratory. To have heard Pericles in Athens, or Cicero in Rome holding forth in the near sacred buildings of the realm would be a life memory for thought and pleasure. We would travel a long way to hear Solomon in his prayer at the dedication of the Temple. That building completion marked a very high point in the history of Israel. It is the last stroke of the builders in making greatness for the magnificent structure that stood before them, a building for which God himself became the architect. When the building was neglected, the people were in decline in more than spiritual backsliding. That kind of accumulated evidence alone is proof enough that our structures have something to do with life meaning. It was a negative matter when the people found themselves at one juncture of history that they were living in sealed homes, while God’s house was a tent. Something was wrong, and they wanted to address the matter so to be remembered differently than they would be if the status quo remained. They didn’t want to be remembered as a secular-only people.
In our multiculturalism, our belief that external factors do not make any difference in our faith (secular or religious), our tendency to plan and manage our lives in the terms of business, our shifting in values related to time which is common in the admiration of currency, we may have lost the power of our buildings to contribute to the development of some affirmative life for the future of our children and community The heritage of a people has much to do with the comfort of life, the peace, the contribution for the keeping and confirmation of some factors we want to prevail beyond our time period. It would make an interesting study to compare life in towns where the church structure was made so important that no other building could be erected that would be taller than the church steeple. What happened to towns that had no church in them? What happened to towns that turned churches into homes or businesses, and did not match the lost edifice with one better than the one vacated?
The church located in a renovated super-market, in an abandoned movie theater, in a store-front building, in an office building, even in a home (perhaps especially in a home) will not likely be functioning fifty years from now unless something is done to make a special sanctuary for the congregation. It is a part of us that each structure represents its purpose. A dog house is for a dog, a bird house for a bird, a home for a family of persons, and a church is an earth home for God that he accepts if the people want to have him present in his house for his family. That house is open for creative contribution at any date in time, but it must have some features that make it a church, and out of place for any other purpose than to serve as the House of God, and where the family is engaged in the warmth of fellowship, and a search for anything that makes life better in the meaning of righteousness. This is as special as anything in our lives. I quickly recognize when I am in a barber shop, in a library, in the office of the president, in an automobile show room. In several towns I have known from decades past, including the one I live in now, there were several churches that closed. They no longer looked like churches. A local one (as also some of the others) was brought back by the denomination that lost its presence. In a new building they have flourished in the ways necessary, including property development, to be churches in a secular society. In the vision of God’s house in all the details there is promise for generations to come for ministry. The move to greater secularism will have impact on the art of Church architecture in the future. *Mark W. Lee, Sr. — 2016, 2020