jim and casper (3 of 3)

One more church-architecture-related comment I want to draw out of Jim & Casper.

The guys had an "emerging church weekend" wherein they visited Imago Dei and Mars Hill, out west. Imago Dei was first:

As soon as we got out of the car, we spotted the redbrick, three-story school surrounded by an asphalt playground ... We went inside and found our way to an old auditorium with a high balcony circling all the way around its perimeter.

"What a great building," said Casper. "It's straight out of the fifties. I half expect the Beav and Wally to be here this morning."

It was the only church whose building got a decidedly positive comment - albeit tainted with sarcasm - from the friendly atheist, and they meet in an old elementary school auditorium.

Casper liked everything about Imago Dei: the worship, the video about the playground they resurrected and how it affected the community, and the visiting pastor from a church plant in L.A. And when said visiting pastor said, "Giving isn't really giving until it interrupts your lifestyle," Casper did not take issue. (Quite the opposite, actually. Casper quoted that pastor several times.)


All of Casper's facility-comments only serve to revive that popular conversation in me: What is the future of church buildings? More than size and style and technology, the pattern that seems to be forming is consistency. A church facility should serve the purposes of the ministry that calls it home.

When a church preached a message of perseverance in an auditorium that seats thousands of people, it seemed out of place. When a church flaunted a community service effort to a camera attached to "a $5000 camera crane," Casper noticed. When a church called itself a church and didn't talk about God, even the friendly atheist got a little irritated. But when a church talks about transforming a community from a school auditorium, it makes sense.

Especially in a society that doesn't see the need to attend church, the future of church architecture may not be in beautiful buildings, but in innovative, flexible, multi-purpose, sustainable buildings.