The Wildesign staff had lunch together today, and the conversation about the recent LifeWay study continued. Nothing was resolved just yet, but we got a little closer to wrapping our heads around the implications of the thing. Here are some of the ideas/comments that came up:
- Designers today, church designers especially, frame a building around cultural norms or according to what we reasonably believe the public wants. That's not how early houses of worship were drawn up. Moses' tabernacle, Solomon's temple, and early Catholic church buildings were all designed to communicate God to visitors. Floor plans and decor and vaulted ceilings revealed God's character. The focus was God, not people.
- It's easy to blame boring or ugly church buildings on "stewardship," but that may be a very western mindset. In Haggai, the Lord gets upset with people for having nice homes while His temple is falling apart. He tells them to fix it up so He can take pleasure in it. As temporary as this all is, God does occasionally take pleasure in what we create.
- Gothic cathedrals were designed to teach people about God. Stories were represented in art and the structures themselves inspired awe at the majesty and the magnitude of God. Illiteracy is not such a problem today, but young people especially are growing up with no Christian influences. Is there a time coming when church architecture should once again help to demonstrate some of the basics about God's nature?
- The arts are fading from places of Christian worship and an emerging generation notices. It's not to our credit.
- On the other hand, none of the exterior pictures that the unchurched were given to choose from is really contemporary. They all have steeples and they're all moderately unattractive. There are no big windows, no adapted store fronts or warehouses, and no landscaping. It looks like they were given one cathedral and three traditional churches to choose from.
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