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Monday, May 16, 2005

The Church Is In Crisis #2: Death By Building

Churches have had buildings for 1700 years. Most people mark the time of Constantine as the advent of buildings for use by churches. Before that it was house churches. Although lots of good has come from churches that have their own buildings, there are also lots of problems with what a building does to a church. So, before I am critical of buildings I want to say that I appreciate them in many ways and have benefited from them in many ways. In fact, my job is housed in a church building. However, at the risk of biting the hand that feeds me, I am going to be critical of church buildings.

So here it goes. Church Buildings


1. …intoxicate churches. When a church builds a building, they feel productive, permanent, and powerful. They get their ecclesial status symbol and talk about it. They give tours and, as I heard one church deacon about the building his church met at, “we’re proud of our building.” When a church has a building, it gets a lot of attention. And all of that attention while being directed toward a building is necessarily not being directed toward serving people. It is hard to have a building and not focus on it.


2. …dictate finances. In many churches, over 33% of their contribution goes to keep the building open. Now, that does not include anything that happens in that building, but just to keep it open. That is principal, interest, insurances, maintenance, repair, utilities, filling it with stuff, etc. If a an annual church budget is $100,000, then the first (and I do mean the first) $33,000 is eaten up by the building before any minister happens, before any poor are served, before anything remotely missional happens.


3. …say, “Size Matters.” The biggest the building the more the temptation there is for church pride. “Look how successful we are,” as you ponder the grand edifice. Suddenly the church is measured in bricks and not love. The easiest things to measure are the most tangible. Without a good amount of persistent focus, then people of a church will gravitate toward their building as their measure of success.


4. ...promote churches as spiritual service providers. The building is the place to go to get spiritual. It is the place of spiritual consumerism. You go there and get some spirituality. Rarely does a building promote spiritual production. Nope. It promotes self-contained spiritual consumables, like Bible Happy Meals, that are tasty for a moment, but when they are digested, there was little nutritional value. Inn fact, a steady diet of these Spiritual Happy Meals will get you sick. The church was meant to be a disciple-making machine, not a spiritual service provider.


5. ...perpetuate worship bingeing and purging. Since the building is the place where worship happens, you go and get all you can get there, and then leave feeling like you got your fill for the week. In some churches you get a little mid week gluttony. It encourages a weekend worship binge. Then you have to wait for the next weekend’s time to binge, while starving yourself half to death until it happens. Although worship does happen when everyone gathers together, if that is all it is, then there is the significant danger of becoming a “worship bulimic.”


6. …produce fellowship fraud. We can grip and grin on Sunday morning and call it fellowship. We can coffee and doughnut before Sunday school and call it fellowship. But what qualifies as fellowship is so minimal it is crazy. We try to create “fellowship time” in little 15 minute chunks of time here and there when the church doors are open. Who are we kidding? What this so easily devolves into is a kind of Sunday morning networking exercise. We build shallow relationships with hand shakes and smiles hoping for favors to be lent and borrowed. That’s not bad networking, but it also is not fellowship. On another note, buildings block fellowship in that they give this community of people so much to divide about that has nothing to do with the kingdom.


7. ...are underutilized. If a business were to use its facilities like a church uses its facilities, the shareholders would revolt and have the CEO’s head on a platter. Church building are 90% empty 90% of the time. Why sink over one third of the tithe (Oh if only it were a full tithe) into something that is almost never used.


8. …determine staffing. Since buildings require bigger is better, when bigger happens, every next staff member needs more specialization. Children, youth, family, worship, etc. Along with each staff member there comes the necessary staff support: secretaries, office machines, storage, etc. The cost of staffing increases dramatically. In fact, in larger churches, there is a minister of administration – basically someone to organize everything. Whew!


9. …duplicate resources. Almost everything that does or should happen in a church building can happen in the home. All else can happen in rented facility that will get the most possible use for the dollar. In short, church buildings are completely unnecessary, but nearly every church has one.


10. …fragment families. A church building creates a situation in which we believe we need to separate people to give them what they need. Yes, developmental appropriateness is important. But at the same time so is intergenerational relationships. Children have their own thing, teens have their own thing, seniors have their own thing, parents have their own thing, etc. Even in the worship service there is much division. Have you ever heard or experienced this? “When we go to church, I never see my kids.” Is this really family friendly? What is supposed to be the most important thing (church) breaks up our families into age groups. What exactly does this teach our children, teens, seniors, parents?


11. …retards church planting. It is not even debatable, church planting is the most effective church growth method. Yet, go suggest to your leaders that you want to plant a church within driving distance of your building and tally up the objections.
It’ll drain off our best members
Our budget will suffer.
Why do we need another church?
It’ll cause a split.
What are you up to?
You won’t hear them say, “I’ve been praying about this for years.” “Praise God, He’s raised up a church planter right here in our own church.”

You might get some encouragement to go to Africa (where they really need help) or to the heathen in the Northwest, but not in your hometown.


12. …promote outsourcing your tithe. You turn your contribution over to the experts who spend it for you. Now, I’m not against community money and collections. The early church did it. However, they gave to a specific cause, and 0% of their dollars went to support a building.

OK, that is enough for now. These are my very abbreviated issues with church building, and in fact, these are not even all of my issues with church buildings. I’ll probably write a lot more about this later and somewhere else.

Peace.

14 comments:

Clarissa said...

Since you are a part of a church that has a building, how have you worked through this issue there? Or are you in struggle with the leadership over the use of the building? Are you talking about your own church building, or are you just generalizing about all church buildings?

I'm glad to be a part of a church that uses much of its building through the week, and I know of many, many others that are good stewards of their space as well. I can only think of 2 right off-hand that have mostly empty buildings, but I can think of 8 or 9 that are very intent on using their space as much as possible, mostly for outreach and bible study (interestingly, the two empty buildings I'm thinking of are by far the smallest of them all.) What are the statistics you have on the space:use ratios? Or are you speaking from assumptions/generalizations?

judy thomas said...

Interesting thoughts Chris. I will have to disagree with some ideas however. Our culture seeks PLACES to go for comfort because PEOPLE have let them down--we are an urban society where buildings matter. We are not nomadic, nor persecuted, and we don't need to hide. When a church uses its building as much as Highland in Abilene does, I have no condemnation to offer. One of my long ago blogs lists all the things which occur there on a daily basis. Perhaps churches need to do more soul searching about what goes on inside the walls
and indeed what goes on in the souls who inhabit those walls.
Central Dallas Ministries doesn't just take place on the streets, there is a PLACE where the people are served. Yes, we could do many of the things in our homes, but how many of us have room for a soup kitchen, and a room full of clothing to give away? I have never regretted one cent given toward a church building and its staff because I have had a taste of its hospitality, service and caring heart. We are not a church building, but we MAKE a church building the heart of God.

Fajita said...

...And off to the woodshed I go.
:-)

I don't have stats to back up my claim, only experiences. I attend a large church with about 1100 folks showing up Sunday. However, I am leaning toward a house church way of doing church and may jump into the soon enough.

The congregation that owns the church building where I am currently at does a great job of using the building, and yet it still sits empty much of the time. I should know I am there everyday. The gym gets some good usage and there are Tuesday Bible studies. It's quite available, but gets used little compared to what it could be used.

The most everyday thing happening at the building is the counseling center. It serves the community daily, directly, and effectively. I like Central Dallas Ministries as Judy mentioned and the Impact Church in Houston, where I have logged many volunteer hours in my Houston days.

Despite the "anti" post, I am not against buildings in and of themselves, but I am against how mush goes into them with (usually) how little gets out of them. I am against how much priority they soak up. I am against how easy it is to allow a church to get so building-centric that it loses its mission.

I'm still waiting to hear about the church doing a capital campaign for poverty, hunger, clean drinking water. For every one of these you'll find 50 brick and mortar campaigns. That's a serious problem.

MaryAnn Mease said...

been in many churches...most were only used about 8 to 15 hours a week. that is alot of mortgage to be payin for such a little amount of time actually spent there.

interesting post. there will be ups and downs to all these points.

but..what IF...somehow...we could arrange several congregations to use the same facility just different days? wouldnt THAT be interesting?
not likely though...

Keith Brenton said...

Interesting suggestion, maryann ... it might have actually happened in the first century in Corinth, where Paul taught in a synagogue. That is, until he and the synagogue ruler and other Christians were tossed out and met next door at the ruler's house ....

Fajita said...

What woulod it be like to see church buildings all abuzz with e constant motion and activity? What if they were busy with people planning mission trips, local extreme make overs of their poor neighborhoods etc? Ahhh, the possibilities.

What if things happened inside the church walls to bless those outside the church walls?

David U said...

I appreciate Chris's challenge....let's use our buildings for the glory of the Father MORE than most of us are doing at the present. I know Richland Hills and North Atlanta are bee-hives during the week, as I am sure many others are also. But my guess is that for every one of those we name, we could name 10 that for the most part sit unused during the week. And that is a shame.

I know of a church here in Searcy where a homeless guy was run off because of the "security risk" he would be to the kids when they showed up about 3 times a week.

Another one of those SAFE choices!

Thanks Chris!
DU

Neal said...

Well, if you want to be controversial, here's your ticket. :-)

Actually, you've once again articulated thoughts that have been bouncing around in my head unwelcomed for a while. I agree with you totally, and I'm a minister who spends time everyday in his church building.

I've had some bad experiences with people making an idol out of the church building. I used to work at a church where I (the youth minister) was told not bring the youth to the building too much - they make it messy. And where I was ordered NOT to advertise our VBS to the surrounding low-income community because "those kids" had no respect for our property. I once caused a scene when I discovered that our budget for the copy machine was significantly larger than the money we'd set aside to help the needy. And even now at a church that I dearly care for, a leader refused a request from a community member to use our facility for a wedding by saying, "If they aren't Christians, why do they need a church? They can go to the courthouse."

But there's no question that many churches have a much more godly attitude toward their buildings, and that they use those buildings to do many good, useful, loving things. Unfortunately, even in those exemplary situations, I believe the rest of your criticisms are still true.

They still give us a feeling of earthly power and importance, they encourage number worship, they still trick people into thinking that worship/spirituality is something that is done to you, they still meet our social needs without demanding fellowship, and they use up SO much money. Church buildings force us into institutional thinking whether we want it or not. In order to be "good stewards" (language I hear much more often today than I see in the Bible), we have to spend our time and energy doing things that are decidedly unspiritual. Sure...church buildings can sometimes be used to achieve good results...but how often do good results distract us from the BEST results?

What if we invested those dollars into AIDS orphans or the needy in Darfur? Wouldn't those results be worth sacrificing our sense of self-worth, importance or cool-ness that are often bound up in buildings?

But even so, I think church buildings are a symptom of a greater problem: We've made the church self-centered. We may seek and save the lost on the side, but it's pretty clear that churches today are mostly concerned with pleasing and pampering ourselves. Our buildings are just the most obvious proof.

Fajita said...

Yeah, the can is open and the worms are everywhere. My next post will be on house church resources.

Neal said...

You might be causing some unforseen problems here, though...ever thought about what would happen if every church tried to sell their building? Who buys church buildings besides other churches? It'd just be a financial disaster...so nevermind.

Fajita said...

It might take a decade, but the government could find use for every single church building.

Or, churches could keep their buildings, but transform them into education centers, ministry centers, housing for the homeless, food and clothing distribution centers,

Donna G said...

Man! I like it all! I like the comments that tell how the buildings are being used properly. But, could all these things not be done in rented facilities?

More food for thought! I am working up to my next post. Thanks for sharing these thoughts.

Neal W. said...

You might be causing some unforseen problems here, though...ever thought about what would happen if every church tried to sell their building? Who buys church buildings besides other churches? It'd just be a financial disaster...so nevermind.

DJG said...

Man! I like it all! I like the comments that tell how the buildings are being used properly. But, could all these things not be done in rented facilities?

More food for thought! I am working up to my next post. Thanks for sharing these thoughts.