My ideal church building daydream

Church planting creates a restless culture. Well, it doesn’t really create restlessness so much as it inflames an already restless heart. A church plant is fragile, mobile, sprouting and scrounging for sunlight so that it can grow and establish.  A church plant is always asking who are our people, and where will our people gather and live? Where are we going and what will it look like when we get there?

These are questions that every human being asks. Every person has a restless and hungry heart. As Augustine said, “Our hearts are restless until they find rest in God.” So it makes sense that when you get a bunch of restless people in a new church it's like carving out a channel for a river to flow into. The river wants to flow. But where will it end up? 

Our hope as Christians is that we will all end up in heaven in the presence of God. The Old Covenant believers called this the Promised Land. The New Covenant believers call this the New Creation. The resurrected Christ has gone before us to secure our final destination. And so we walk by faith, trusting that Christ is leading us to our inheritance. 

But what are we doing now? Knowing that we will not fully arrive as believers until death, or the final return of Christ, what do we do while we wait? 

We don’t just sit around. We think, we feel, we build, we love, we exist in relationship to God living for the glory of God. Jesus calls this seeking the Kingdom of God on earth as it is in heaven. So our job right now as Christians is to construct a life that looks like heaven, which is whatever life looks like when Jesus gets his way. 

There’s a lot of different ways we can go with this. We can explore many implications of this idea that we are called to seek heaven on earth. But let me focus on something that has practical concern for me as a church planter. My concern is this: What kind of space should a restless church family hungry for a home strive to create? 

Let me phrase it this way. If it is indeed our mission to seek God’s Kingdom (Mt 6:33), and if it is God’s will for His kingdom to be experienced on earth as it is in heaven, the church has an opportunity to create a place where people can experience a taste of heaven on earth when they gather with us. What would that look like? 

Let me suggest that the church has an opportunity to use its gathering space, its building, as a means to experience the Kingdom of God. I know the building is not the essence of the church. But just like your family, your house is not the essence of your household, but the building you live in plays an important role in everything your family does. The family home is where you nurture and educate your children. It is the space where you enjoy one another's company. It is a place for showing hospitality and for entertaining guests. And most importantly, since God is the center of the Christian family, the home is a place for experiencing the presence of God. 

So the church family has an opportunity with its gathering space to give people a taste in the Kingdom of God. Since the Kingdom will not be fully experienced until the New Creation, this experience is a foretaste. It is a nibble. But what a glorious nibbling it could be. 

Let me suggest an imaginary building. Indulge with me a dream. Since I am a pastor of a church plant without a “permanent home,” I daydream of gathering in a space that draws people into a beautiful vision for Kingdom life. 

Imagine first the sanctuary. The sanctuary is just a fancy name for the place that is set apart and dedicated for a special use. And in Christian worship it is a physical place that is consecrated for the worship of the holy God. The sanctuary is the room where the people of God come together to celebrate the glorious gift of God’s presence. As the Psalmist rejoices, “So I have looked upon you in the sanctuary, beholding your power and glory (Psalm 63:2). And in the sanctuary he passionately praises God with hands lifted high because his steadfast love is better than life. The sanctuary is where we focus all of our attention on God.

All throughout the Bible God’s people have gathered in the holy sanctuary to praise the holy God. The physical details of that gathering space have varied over time. God’s people have gathered in mountain sanctuaries (Ex 15:17), tent sanctuaries (Ex 36:1), and temple sanctuaries (1 Kings 6). And God’s people have enjoyed the presence of God in gathered worship in home sanctuaries (Acts 2:46). And throughout church history believers have gathered in caves, warehouses, bars, schools, event centers, basements, pole barns, and pergolas. The list could go on. Honestly the whole earth is God’s sanctuary. As Acts 17:24 states, God is not limited to the temples made by human hands. The whole creation is the Creators. And yet he chooses to be present with the gathered church coming together as living stones (1 Peter 2:4). The local church is the temple of the living and holy God. So just about anywhere the people of God gather to worship the holy God is consecrated as a sanctuary. 

But back to my daydream. It is true that we can worship God anywhere. But if we had freedom what would we build? This is a fascinating question that forces us to reckon with our presuppositions about beauty and practicality. It forces us to deal with a lot of things related to the theology of place. But let me just narrow the focus and point out the obvious. While it is true that we are pilgrims and wanderers on earth (1 Pt 2:11), is it not also true that we desire a home? And while we know that we will never be truly at home in this world, don’t we want to live in a house that we can call a home? You see where I’m going with this. While it’s true that Christians in China worship with bags over their heads out of fear of persecution, and while it is true that the people of God enslaved to Egyptian masters had no temple, is that the ideal to strive for? If we have the means and the freedom, what would we build to the glory of God given the chance? 

The early church is often cited as the standard for Christian practice. And I agree with that for the most part. But the early church is not the completed church. It’s the early church. Give them time and see what they build. And you don’t have to wonder what they would build if the got the freedom and resources. In a few hundred years they built cathedrals.

Looking at a cathedral, or almost any church building built before the 1930’s, one thing you notice is that they expressed their theology through their architecture. Specifically their sanctuaries emphasized the holy and transcendent glory of God. The high ceilings, the cross shaped floor plan, the tall stained glass windows. Almost everything built and decorated in the ancient sanctuaries were an attempt to draw our hearts to the holiness of God. 

So back to my daydream. Imagine a room that draws your gaze upwards. Imagine a room that inspires awe. And imagine a room that carries the voices of the saints into the heavens. By helping people experience the vertical nature of worship we are helping people experience the kingdom of God. 

But the Kingdom of God is not just transcendent and vertical. It is immediate and horizontal. The almighty and holy God took on flesh and lived among us in the person of Jesus. God is not just distant in heaven. He is present in our ordinary and creaturely lives. He is Emmanuel, God with us. 

And because God is with us the Christian church celebrates the presence of God with convivial joy. Psalm 23 illustrates this well. Our God prepares a table for his people, anointing our heads with oil, and causing our cups to overflow. The Bible pictures God’s work of salvation as a great reconciling work that brings us into his family and gives us a seat at his table. And his table is laden with fat and rich food (Ps 63:5), bread to strengthen our hearts (Ps 104:15), and vintage wine that makes us glad (Ps 104:15; Is 25:6). These are just a few of the verses that describe the joy of being brought into the family of God. 

This leads me to imagine a second room in my ideal church building. That room is the banquet hall. This is a room for big meals, big laughter, and big joy. This gives people a taste of heaven, where we will all enjoy the marriage supper of the lamb (Rev 19:9). And so when we invite others as a church to our common table we are inviting people to experience the great glad joy of heaven. 

There is obviously so much more we could add to this imaginary church building. But this is what enchants my heart. An ideal church building draws our hearts upward to the holy God. And it also provides a place for our hearts to be knitted together horizontally by the Spirit of God as one big happy family around the table. This sounds like heaven to me.