Church Buildings: Who Needs Them?

The church building boom that hit its peak in North America after World War II is waning. In its place has come a contrasting trend, one of skepticism over the value—even the validity—of brick and mortar in congregational life. Gibson Winter in The Suburban Captivity of the Churches was among the first to complain of an “edifice complex.” He said it “expresses interest in status rather than worship.” Many a churchman has since picked up this line of criticism, and in some communions and localities a congregation now feels almost embarrassed to suggest it needs to build.

The anti-building mood probably got its start from the new priority given to social activism by religious liberals. They urged that money be diverted from building funds to efforts to bring about needed social change. The mood reached its zenith in 1967 with the halting of work on the Episcopal Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City. The Right Reverend Horace W. B. Donegan said the building, about two-thirds complete, would stand unfinished as a symbol of the agony of the cities until human needs are met.

The charismatic and Jesus movements with their penchant for extra-church Bible studies and fellowships have contributed to the turn away from reliance on well-equipped facilities for worship and education.

To some extent, the anti-building temperament among North American churchmen has been healthful. Some churches have been extravagantly overbuilt. Some are monuments to congregational pride or to competition with other churches. In some denominations, if a pastor’s tenure at a church was not marked by the start of a building project it was considered less than successful.

Yet Christians must beware lest they get carried away with unbiblical notions. We must resist, for example, Archie Hargraves’s assertion (quoted approvingly by Harvey Cox) that the work of God in the world can be compared to a “floating crap game.” By consistently identifying churches with names of places, the New Testament makes it clear that bodies of believers have geographical roots and should operate from specific bases. The Church is not simply a human institution, but it is at least that, and it needs an identifiable headquarters. It is a corporate assembly of believers who come together for worship, education, fellowship, service, mutual encouragement, inspiration, and, at times, rebuke.

It’s easy to lose sight of this biblical perspective in the drift toward free-wheeling ministries. The church in one sense is Christians in a huddle near the line of action; but in another it is, to change the figure, a control panel where strategy is coordinated.

But can’t the church simply operate out of homes? Isn’t that what the early church did? Comparisons must be made carefully, because neither homes nor separate church buildings are specifically prescribed in Scripture as places for Christian assembly. Small groups meeting in homes offer a commendable form of fellowship and outreach. But in most situations homes cannot adequately carry out the functions of churches. Members of Trinity Baptist Church in Lexington, Kentucky, learned this when a fire destroyed their building and they had to meet in a variety of places for more than two years. “All this taught us that churches do need buildings that are designed to be used for church purposes,” said pastor Bob W. Brown.

Meeting in homes easily if unintentionally reinforces social exclusiveness, and a true church for its own good should have a cultural and age mix. Too many people look for churches that suit them, that is, that underscore their own outlooks instead of subjecting themselves to the perhaps beneficial scrutiny of contrasting viewpoints. In a church building, where property ownership is held in common and services are open to all comers, there is strong likelihood of a broader mix of people.

Compared to the North American standard of living and the vast outlays for luxuries in our homes, the cost of new church construction is usually within reasonable limits. It has never averaged out to more than $10 per year per church member in the United States. Many of us spend more than that on charcoal for cook-outs.

The charge of “extravagance” reminds one of the complaint of Judas Iscariot when Mary of Bethany poured costly ointment on Jesus. The Lord justified the act. “She has done a beautiful thing to me,” he said, adding, “Truly, I say to you, wherever this gospel is preached in the whole world, what she has done will be told in memory of her.”

In Old Testament times God commissioned temples that were beautiful and memorable, and the principle of general revelation makes provision for divine communication aesthetically through such a medium. It can be so today, too. Certainly the many great Orthodox cathedrals in Communist countries show that great architecture can be spiritually significant; in those lands, conditioned against any form of religion, the cathedrals speak eloquently. Grandeur is not in of itself evil. Indeed, it can be a part of the worship of God. Even “status” need not be a spiritual liability. Certainly there is no merit in cheapness and shoddiness per se.

Church buildings: who needs them? Christians need them to carry out the Great Commission!

Missouri: Peace In Our Time?

Two years in preparation, the Report of synodical president Dr. Jacob A. O. Preus to the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod (see News, page 38) is remarkable not only for its comprehensiveness and clarity but also for the author’s evident determination to “speak the truth in love.” Preus set himself to the task of getting at the facts in a situation badly clouded by emotional and sensationalistic charges from several sides.

A substantial amount of hostile advance publicity in both religious and secular media pictured Preus as a witchhunter and stamped his Report, sight unseen, as an unreliable diatribe. At this point in history, the secular mind is indifferent—if not actually contemptuous of—questions of ultimate truth. Therefore the attempts to discredit Preus’s motives, his fairness, and his accuracy are likely to continue, even though reading the Report is enough to refute them. But the important matter is not whether Preus is accurate or fair, nor even whether he is prudent in determining to pursue this issue to a conclusion despite all the criticism he has aroused. Until the amply documented Report came out, it might have been possible to discount allegations of “liberalism” at Concordia Theological Seminary (St. Louis) as witch-hunting. Now the issue is clearly joined.

Neither Preus nor anyone else would deny that the teaching at Concordia is generally more conservative than at most Protestant seminaries. But the biggest question is not where Concordia stands on the theological spectrum but where it stands on the inspiration and authority of Scripture and the objective truth of basic biblical doctrines. The Report, a watershed document, makes it clear that while all the faculty accept the authority of Scripture in theory, several of them claim for “theology” the right to hold different opinions about what Scripture actually teaches on several central issues, including not only the Virgin Birth but also the Resurrection. No one at Concordia seems to be denying that Jesus’ tomb was empty, but several defend the right of theologians to claim that the Bible does not teach that it was. They hold that this difference of opinion falls within the area of “freedom of inquiry in theology”; President Preus thinks that it undercuts biblical truth and confessional loyalty.

Preus will be charged with threatening academic freedom—but to make this charge is to allow the philosophers to sit in judgment on the prophets. He will also be charged with disrupting the peace of the church. But what is the meaning of peace if it can be preserved only by refusing to face issues? The conflict would not have arisen had no attempt been made to legitimate theological pluralism in the Missouri Synod. Before Preus’s Report, it may have been possible to minimize the problem. Now the only way to avoid it is deliberately to ignore it, i.e., in effect to allow a situation in which we say that while we believe the Bible, we are not very sure what it teaches.

The conflict shaping up for 1973 will be rugged, but if the Missouri Synod tries to sidestep it by uttering evangelical platitudes and ignoring Preus’s facts, it may well mean the end of Missouri as a confessing church—and another addition to the long list of denominations whose chief agreement consists in not knowing what to believe.

Southern Presbyterians Regroup

A new Presbyterian church is in the making. Or, depending on your perspective, maybe it is the old one taking a crucial step necessary to retain its identity. At any rate, a group of Southern Presbyterian churchmen have formed a new body that they call the Vanguard Presbytery, Incorporated, a “provisional presbytery for Southern Presbyterian and Reformed Churches in America Uniting.” We will report on the move in our next issue.

We regret that more Southern Presbyterians have not conscientiously sought to arrest that denomination’s leftward theological drift. Now they are witnessing such a marked departure from their orthodox heritage that some churchmen feel they can no longer remain part of the ecclesiastical fellowship.

The Miracle Of Love

Credit Miss America 1973 with giving the world a well-expressed insight into love. It is like the loaves and the fishes, said Terry Anne Meeuwsen of Wisconsin: it multiplies when you begin to share it. She made the comparison in a brief network television interview just after being crowned in Atlantic City this month. Miss Meeuwsen is a Roman Catholic who studied music at St. Norbert College.

Funds And Favors

The incident of the Republican campaign contributions that ended up in the bank accounts of men caught flat-footed inside Democratic headquarters in Washington points out the wisdom of full-disclosure laws. Of course the Democrats will make all the political gain they can so long as the Republicans refuse to issue full account of their getting and spending. Similarly, the GOP should not be remiss in revealing any Democratic deviousness, especially since the Democrats are making special claims to be straight-arrow.

In the past, both parties have passed out favors in return for funds, and the practice is sure to continue. It could be sharply curtailed, however, through the enforcement of full disclosure. No business, labor union, professional or trade association, or individual should hesitate to disclose fully all gifts to candidates for political office. When money is able to influence government, the truly competitive aspects of our self-proclaimed free-enterprise system are hindered. How well one produces the goods or performs the services becomes secondary to how much one has given to successful political campaigns. Full disclosure will not eliminate all the influence that campaign contributors wield on office-holders, but, with the help of an energetic press, it will certainly curtail the more flagrant abuses.

Unlikely Criticism

The United States Supreme Court got a stiff rebuke from an unlikely source last month. A young man caught robbing a bank in Brooklyn, New York, held off police for fifteen hours, and during that time he became quite talkative. A newsman quoted him as saying:

I’ll shoot anyone in the bank. The Supreme Court will let me get away with this. There’s no death penalty. It’s ridiculous. I can shoot everyone here, then throw my gun down and walk out, and they can’t put me in the electric chair. You have to have a death penalty; otherwise this can happen every day.

What he seems to have failed to take into account is that capital punishment is still inflicted by law-enforcement officers. His accomplice in the robbery also missed the lesson—he was killed by FBI bullets that brought the siege to an end.

The effects of the Supreme Court’s decision against the death penalty deserve thorough study. We may find that in the case of capital-type crimes it will encourage police to use deadly force more readily against obvious offenders.

On The Edge Of Bleakness

John Keats captures the cornucopia of autumn in his ode “To Autumn”:

Seasons of mists and mellow fruitfulness,

Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;

Conspiring with him how to load and bless

With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eaves run;

To bend with apples the mossed cottage-trees,

And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;

To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells

With a sweet kernel.

But heavy-laden trees and deeply-dipping vines soon lose their fruit. Autumn balances between harvesttide fullness and after-harvest barrenness.

Jesus, too, talks of vines and branches, and explains the spiritual way to a rich autumn. If we, the branches, abide in him, the vine, our fruit will be worthy of God’s harvest. If not, the fruit we bear will fall unused and disregarded, leaving us barren of the richness God gives to all creatures who fulfill his purposes.

Another Munich

For those who have hoped to see sport gain greater stature as a means of promoting international harmony, the Twentieth Olympiad was a terribly disillusioning experience. The games in Munich brought out the worst in people: many a sportswriter called them a vivid reflection of the sickness of our time. We might well ask whether there is enough redeeming social value to the Olympics to warrant the all too apparent risks. As travel and communications become still easier, the risks will continue to rise.

Instead of bringing glory, the Olympic games added another black page to Munich’s history. For more than a generation the city’s name has been synonymous with appeasement because of the now infamous concessions made there to Hitler by British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain in 1938. Now Munich will also be remembered for political terrorism, ineptitude, opportunism, and poor sportsmanship.

One note of cheer, which few are aware of but which is thoroughly described in this issue’s news section, is the evangelistic blitz that took place in Munich during the Olympics. Despite the chaos, God was at work bringing men and women to himself. There, for all who were willing to look and listen, was a demonstration of the difference the Gospel can make. For this we ought to rejoice, as well as for the remarkable unity of spirit achieved by the thirty-seven Christian groups who were on hand with their 2,000 workers.

When Night Came Too Soon

Who can fail to sympathize with the incredible misfortune that befell two of America’s top sprinters, Eddie Hart and Reynaud Robinson, during the Olympic Games in Munich? A misunderstanding in scheduling was compounded to the point that they failed to appear at the appointed time for a quarter-final heat and thus missed a good chance of winning a medal. In that brief lapse, years of rigorous training went down the drain. They had prepared well, but for one reason or another they simply were not at the right place at the right time.

It seldom happens with such drama, but there are all too many times when Christians fail to seize great opportunities. We invest significant portions of our lives in getting ready—in prayer, education, and so on—and yet when a big moment comes we are not there. Jesus said, “We must work the works of him who sent me, while it is day; night comes, when no one can work.”

Have something to add about this? See something we missed? Share your feedback here.