BLOG 7/22/15. “IF YOU BUILD IT, THEY WILL COME!” … OR WILL THEY?

In the movie The Field of Dreams, a farmer was convinced by some strange voice that he could recall the baseball heroes of the past if he would build a playing field for them on his farm. It made a good story and was quite popular. But there is something of a similar fantasy that occurs, sadly, in a number of formerly prominent church institutions in almost any city you can name. In the post-World War II era, the Greatest Generation having survived the depression and the Great War were eager to reclaim the traditions and security of life they had missed, and part of that was the building of impressive churches. Older churches engaged in significant upgrades, and denominations planted their franchises in every new neighborhood. Church architects had a field day. The “build it and they will come” fantasy lasted through the Boomer generation, and then began a significant fade and drift, as younger generations simply didn’t come. The Generation X children of the Boomers became a bit more cynical about the church, and with the following Millennial generation that drift became a disturbing exodus from traditional church institutions. Still, many of those older church institutions identified their church with their buildings, and sought to reverse the trend by architectural upgrades, . . . but missed the point altogether that the spiritual hungerings of these younger generations were not met by architecture, . . . but by answers to their spiritual hungerings, which they cloaked behind their lively digital and social media culture, its music and entertainment.

There are some fascinating counter-examples of Christian communities that are, in fact, attracting these younger men and women in droves. In the late 1980’s a Christian teacher was challenged to consider planting a church in the upper-West Side of Manhattan, New York–a ‘no man’s land’ for the church. His deliberate investigation discovered that it was populated with large numbers of young men and women who had moved to New York to escape the stifling Christian expressions they had known elsewhere (I’m generalizing here, to be sure). So, without any buildings, in rented space, he began deliberately holding worship gatherings for the small colony of church planters who had joined him. He spoke to their actual hungerings in his teaching. He tuned-in to their lives and to their culture. The church grew exponentially, and now these couple of decades later numbers in the thousands, and has planted many new churches elsewhere in the metropolitan area—still with no permanent buildings of its own. Granted, Tim Keller is a very unique and gifted teacher and leader, but his example says worlds to those who cling to the build it and they will come fantasy.

My own city of Atlanta holds a similar, though perhaps less dramatic example. Midtown Atlanta is the throbbing hub of the digital culture and powerful companies tapping into the brainpower of Georgia Tech. It is where young urban professionals want to live, where there are colorful eateries and music culture and nightlife. It is the continual area of multiplying apartments and condominiums. It is also the area where older traditional church congregations are aging, struggling with expensive buildings, but which church are commuter congregations and are now irrelevant and non-indigenous to their own neighborhood—and are dying.

Meanwhile, an enterprising group of contagious younger Christians who live in the midcity neighborhood planted a church for themselves, first renting an unused former church building, but quickly outgrowing it, so finding an available warehouse nearby have generated a church that is providing the nurture, equipping them for their daily incarnation, and attracting growing numbers of spiritually hungry residents, now a couple of thousand. It is not their building nor institutional prestige that is the key, but their contagious Christian presence in Midtown Atlanta that explains them. They are both indigenous and relevant to their context. They are also pursuing a vision of a hundred house churches in that part of the city. It is not their building but their contagious incarnational Christian faith that explains them. They are speaking to the actual spiritual hungerings of that culture. Go figure!