1 of 5

I received a card in the mail. On the front was a picture of blue-marble planet Earth dangling in the blackness of outer space.

Inside the card was printed: "Wish you were here."

That card speaks volumes about the challenge facing church architecture today. What planet can a church be living on when it puts up a multimillion-dollar education wing with fiber-optic cable but without the kind of space that will accommodate new structures, tools, and methods of learning?

One day the trustees of that church may have to answer a God who asks: "Now tell me this again: On the verge of the 21st century, you spent millions of dollars to teach children about my Son, using blackboards, boxy classrooms, and lecture-drill-test methods of instruction?"

The Protestant Reformation that followed the invention of the Gutenberg press in the 16th century ushered in an architectural revolution. To move the church into a print culture, in which people could read instead of simply absorbing what others told them, required massive changes in spaces that would be used for worship and teaching.

Today we are undergoing another kind of spiritual awakening as the church undergoes a postmodern Reformation from print to screen. That revolution can't happen without altering the physical space of the church. What might postmodern church architecture look like? Here are my Ten Commandments of Architecture for the Postmodern Church:

10. Thou shalt not make a graven image. Too much of our church architecture is "egotecture," designed to honor a person, school of design, or principle. Architecture for the postmodern Reformation is designed for recycling. It's egalitarian, mobile, and adaptable for multiple use.

Of course, you are not just putting up a building when you build a church; you are constructing sacred space. But that doesn't mean that space can't have more than one purpose.

We're already living in multifunctional spaces. Kitchens are filled with interactive appliances, and family rooms contain everything from computers and entertainment centers to sofa beds and treadmills. Likewise, our churches should be adaptable to the changing needs of the 21st century.

One of the most important things to learn about the postmodern age is that opposite things happening at the same time aren't necessarily contradictory. If church architects want to avoid creating graven images, they must discover a way to incorporate the dynamic tension between opposites, such as innovation and tradition, improvisation and structure, transiency and permanence.

The best image for bringing opposites together into one is the fountain. A fountain is always changing, yet always staying the same; always moving, yet always still; there is rest in movement, yet movement in rest. Capture the dual nature of the fountain in your architecture, and you won't build a graven image that subsequent generations will have to labor under.

next page... |  1 of 5