BLOG 10/23/13. (CONT.) THE POSSIBLE LIABILITY OF CHURCH BUILDINGS
In J. R. R. Tolkien’s epic, Voldemort is the name “which must not be spoken.” For most traditional and custodial church communities, the same is true of even raising the possibility of the subject that questions the viability of church buildings, or how such buildings might well be a liability to the very mission of the church. I am regularly amused when I raise this possible liability in personal conversation with pastoral and church leaders how quickly they change the subject.
So allow me to be brief, and perhaps heretical, insane, contrary, or whatever . . . but I’m no novice in this realm of ecclesiology and of missiology. As I indicated in my last Blog, church buildings can enhance the mission and be useful, and be good stewardship in some cases—but more often they are idols, swept and polished and hugely expensive.
The church over its history and in its great missionary explosions has not depended upon church buildings. Meeting places? Of course. But church communities meet in rented storefronts, on beaches, in clandestine conventicles, in homes, out of sight, in coffee shops or hotel ballrooms . . . all kinds of convenient places as they pursue their pilgrim journey. Missional churches always must insist on being mobile, versatile, and flexible as they pursue their mission of being communal demonstrations of God’s new humanity in Christ.
That kind of thinking is disturbing, if not anathema, to comfort-zone Christian communities. OK, so be it. I want to propose that the greatest favor God could bestow on most comfort-zone churches would be the reality-check of having their church buildings destroyed, or expropriated. Then . . . then they would have to come together and ask the basic questions: Why has God called us? To whom has God called us? Why are we here? How do we equip ourselves so that every one of us is mature in Christ and contagious with the gospel in our daily lives, in our families, in our work place, in our twenty-four/seven lives? And is a permanent building essential, and is it good stewardship? Or is there another way?
How can we be a pilgrim people? How can aliens such as we are facilitate purposeful meeting together in such a context that we can “teach and exhort one another with psalms and hymns and spiritual songs?”
Face it: that is a question that will not be spoken by most church leadership. Church buildings become expensive idols, and the habitation of in-house church activities that are so often inimical to the mission of God. They become the habitation of what I somewhat humorously describe as: Thomas Kincaid ecclesiology. Figure that one out.
There: I’ve said it. Comments?
