What’s the balance of building beautiful church experiences on earth while remaining eternally minded?
Visiting family out of state, we attended their church for smoothies, worship, and a message from a Christian psychologist. When you pull into the property, you’re met with smiles and signs as they direct you to a parking spot. Your typical mega church experience.
Approaching the doors, I noticed the quality and detail of how they built their church building. The interior is a modern classical mix of steal, stone, black, and beige. They men of the church are cheering on kids and adults on a pull up bar, having fun, wearing matching branded shirts. The lobby is beautiful. Tall ceilings and windows looked like the kind of canvas Michelangelo would have painted a life-work on.
We walked to the half gift shop, half coffee shop that genuinely puts billion dollar coffee shop chains to shame. I got a smoothie humorously named after their pastor. Wasn’t sure how I felt about it at first to be honest.
Waking into the sanctuary, or concert venue, I was reminded of my first church. Stadium like seating, fog machines, lighting grids, LED walls, and a sea of cloth tan pull-down chairs. There’s something comfortable about it, familiar. An “at home” feel. But, there were reasons I left. The worship was full and beautiful. The atmosphere of a massive crowd of Christian’s worshiping Christ-centered songs and hymns, with the bass and lights, was refreshing. A space like this makes it easy for me to close my eyes and listen and worship loudly and intimately.
There’s a tug of war happening inside of me.
Is this vanity or an act of worship? Classic cathedrals were the pinnacle of the architecture of their time. And while western architecture is different, isn’t the intent the same? Or were the churches of old guilty of the same vain, Eden building today’s western churches are attempting to recreate?
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