BUILDING NEW CHURCHES
Wherever you live, there are new church buildings being constructed. Some designs are realistic but so many seem to be going to exotic extremes.
Does it disturb you when you find such combined community centers, with gyms, fully-equipped banquet facilities, radio and television studios and sanctuary lighting, organ placement and display - everything though to be needed for extended media mission plans.
I would urge upon building committees to think about what they are building. Is it a house of worship? Or, is it something else, entirely?
It is, truly, a dwelling place for God?.
I think most of us would agree that the proper dwelling place of God is within the hearts, minds, and souls of mankind.
A few might insist it is to be within a physical tent, shed, building, tabernacle, temple, church, or cathedral... built as near to perfection as possible, as a proper dwelling place apart for God in our midst. Much depends, it seems, on what we are born to believe. But, environment and circumstances can also have a marked bearing on what we accept as proper.
In actual experience where God lives is connected vitally to where we live and we must, from time to time, consider the bounds and limits of our total community of faith.
Each of us is a Temple in a sense. So our sphere is larger than the physical counting and tabulations of the condition of rooms, or bathrooms or garages or any accountings of our possessions or holdings earned directly or by inheritance and fortunate happenstance. Our domain is bigger than any room; larger than any extended listing of such chambers, and ,by far, more impressive in essential simplicity . It is bigger than the holdings which made it possible.
What we build deals with essential facts about our faith and changes made by the coming of Christ into our personal life and affairs. We are not as we used to be at one time and we must learn to act and to build accordingly..
Our fellow fellow citizens in the community of God will held build the new church upon a foundation not unlike the fellowship of and prophets and apostles of old. Christ Jesus, himself, being the chief cornerstone, in whom the entire structure is joined together is is is to prosper as you intend it – as a dwelling place for God among us.
The new church you build is more than mere brick and mortar, glass and steel, adobe slabs and grass - if that be your circumstance.
To confine our religious potential to a certain unnecessary finite real estate is to take upon ourselves burdens of debt and management which can only detract from the intended purposes of the building.
A.L.M. February 10, 2003 [c465wds]
