Walls Do Talk - Christianity Today

Upon returning to the United States on furlough, a missionary family from Africa was provided a home by their host church. It was much larger than the space they had occupied overseas. As much as the children enjoyed the extra room, the mother lamented that she had lost her family.The sense of connection they had shared in their small, admittedly inconvenient, house in Africa was quickly lost in the larger American home. Eventually the family returned to Africa and reestablished that sense of connection.

Space matters.

When it comes to designing, securing, and using space, many church leaders are motivated by practicality—how many people can fit inside? As good as this intention may be, we must go beyond that. Ultimately we must ask what space will help us have the greatest gospel impact—not just quantitatively (how many people can we accommodate?) but also qualitatively (how is this space forming people spiritually?).

In recent years many congregations have opted for worship spaces that resemble shopping malls. They have neutralized sacred space to avoid intimidating unchurched people. Abandoning stained glass, baptisteries, and Communion tables, they have sought to make people comfortable with familiar theater-like settings. A desire to contextualize the gospel within the local culture is a good thing, but it can cause people to assume the church is a commercial venture.

I wonder—are we thinking as intentionally about the design of our ministry spaces as retailers are about the way they design their stores?

I ask my students to make observations about the use of space at clothing stores they visit. Two design elements are frequently reported: lots of mirrors and no clocks.

This is no accident. Store designers use the space to communicate to and influence shoppers. They want consumers not to worry about time or other responsibilities and to be self-focused. The values of a store are communicated by the design of its space. There is intentionality.

What values does your ministry facility communicate? Are they values you intend to communicate?

What's your theology of space?

We must think beyond the seating capacity of our buildings and start considering how our spaces are forming, reinforcing, and even transforming the values of those who enter them. Space, like language, is a medium of communication, and we serve a God who cares greatly about communicating with his world.

The coffee bar has replaced the Lord's Table as the place where real community happens.

Space matters to God. John's Gospel says, "The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us" (Jn. 1:14). Translated more literally, Jesus "tabernacled" among us. John is saying that Jesus surpasses the Old Testament tabernacle and Temple as the ultimate dwelling place of God in space.

Later, in Revelation 21:3, we see the eschatological vision where God finally lives with his people, fulfilling a promise from the Old Testament. "And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, 'Now the dwelling of God is with men, and he will live with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God.'" (Also see Lev. 26:11-12 and Ezek. 37:26-28.).

The power of proximity

If proximity did not matter to him, God's Son could have hovered over Earth dropping gospel tracts. Instead he became incarnate and lived in our midst. If space did not matter to God, there would not be exhortations to continue meeting together (Heb. 10:24-25). The Bible is dominated by a God who longs to be in close proximity to his people, and puts great importance on the gathering of his people as the temple of the Holy Spirit (1 Cor. 3:16-17).

Consider the practice of the first Christians. The wonderful description given in Acts 2:42-47 reveals that they "continued to meet together in the temple courts," and "they broke bread in their homes and ate together." Space mattered to these believers, but Acts 2 reveals flexibility in how space is used for fellowship and worship. There is no single prescription for what sacred space must look like. The record of Scripture shows that space can be configured and reconfigured to foster community centered in Christ.

This does not mean, however, that anything goes. When Jesus told the Samaritan woman that true worship is in spirit and in truth rather than on this or that mountain (Jn. 4:21-24), he wasn't saying that space does not matter, but that wherever worship occurs it must be centered in him—the Living Word—through the Spirit. While the believers in Acts 2 used space flexibly for their fellowship and ministry, there is also a uniformity of focus. Whether in temple courts or homes, their gatherings always focused around Word and Sacrament.

One in Christ or coffee?

We too must allow for flexibility while holding strongly to the centrality of Christ in our gatherings, no matter what kind of space we are using. Are we forming our communities and engaging in fellowship around Word and Sacrament, or is something else taking their rightful place?

Paul chides the rich Christians in Corinth for failing to keep Christ at the center of their gathering (1 Cor. 11). They were not sharing the Lord's Supper with the poorer Christians. While the rich feasted in the dining room of the house church, the poor were out in the courtyard—literally on the outside looking in. While the Greco-Roman culture allowed, and even expected, such segregation, the feast of Christ's kingdom confronted such social mores—and thus Paul's rebuke.

Perhaps the rich Christians in Corinth were unaware of just how much their Greco-Roman culture shaped their understanding of the church and their use of space. They used space to divide the church rather than unite it. Similarly, it's very difficult for many contemporary Christians to recognize how much we have been shaped by the consumer culture in which we live—it is in the air we breathe and the water (or coffee) we drink.

Consider that in many churches the coffee bar has displaced the Lord's Table as the place where real community happens. Due in part to the neutralizing of sacred space that has been popular since the 1980s, churches began removing or deemphasizing the Lord's Table and introducing coffee bars. Without doubt the desire has been to build community by offering people a culturally familiar setting to engage one another. But we must ask: What formative message does a coffee bar convey?

A coffee bar mostly carries the values of our culture. We've come to expect coffee bars to offer a number of choices to meet our desires (decaf, tea, hot chocolate), and the setting is one of leisure and comfort. We usually gather in affinity groups. We sip the beverages not because we're thirsty but because we're conditioned to want them.

By contrast, what does the Lord's Table convey? It is a symbol of sacrificial love that breaks down cultural divisions and barriers of affinity. It reminds us that life is about being chosen by the Lord for interpersonal communion rather than choosing to consume stuff, and it reminds us we are called to take up our cross rather than seek personal comfort.

Both the coffee bar and Lord's Table affirm community, but the kind of community they affirm differs significantly. Churches with coffee bars may have to work harder to ensure they are fostering community around the values of Christ rather than casual consumerism.

At the same time, there is no guarantee that a church that prominently displays the Lord's Table and forgoes coffee will automatically model unity, pastoral care, or break down cultural and generational cliques. It's particularly hard when we engage the Lord's Table privately or solely with our friends and loved ones.

A congregation I served restructured its space to celebrate Communion with greater intentionality. One Sunday after the sermon, the congregation proceeded to the fellowship hall to celebrate the Lord's Supper around large, circular tables. We were encouraged to intentionally sit with people with whom we didn't normally associate and to share with those at our table what the Lord's sacrifice meant to us personally. After each person shared, everyone was to break bread from the loaf provided and dip it into the Communion cup at the table. This process was to continue until everyone had shared.

One woman came to me several weeks later and said that this had been the most meaningful celebration of Communion she had ever experienced. She was grateful the church had restructured its space to move us beyond our comfort zones of associating simply with the people we already knew.

In this example space, and how we utilized it, became a medium for communicating the values of the gospel and deconstructing the values of our consumer culture.

Making room for technology

The medium we use to communicate influences how others receive and interpret a message. The printing press, radio, television, film, and the internet have all influenced communication—not simply in terms of accessing information but also in the way the information shapes our lives and values.

Take, for example, the new generation of technology known as "Web 2.0," which promises greater opportunities for people to come together from remote locations and shape the information they receive, promoting greater interaction. Thus, technology shapes our perceptions and acquisition of information as well as how we encounter the world around us.

Churches have used technology in various ways, from video recordings of church services to virtual campuses where parishioners can "attend" church from remote locations by watching a live video feed on a computer screen.

These new technologies and their impact on the way we think about ministry space shouldn't be dismissed outright. Remember, the New Testament allows for flexibility of space, and these uses of technology can foster a certain level of community. Through television or the internet, a shut-in can experience (to some extent) a church service at home rather than be cut off from participation entirely.

And as churches outgrow their building spaces, these technologies allow services to expand at remote locations rather than putting exceptionally large amounts of money into building bigger and bigger facilities.

But virtual space, like physical space, must be used intentionally—with thought given to how it is forming our people. What difference does a virtual service (through live feed or videotaping) make on the cultivation of community?

While a virtual service has the advantage of increasing the opportunity for reaching a greater number of people with the message, can a virtual space ever replace a physical location and human touch?

One of my friends attends a satellite campus of his megachurch. He rarely sees his pastor except on the video screen as the pastor speaks from the main campus. When he saw the pastor (in the flesh) at a church event, he gave him a hug and said, "I just had to come up and hug you. It's just not as fulfilling hugging a movie screen." They both laughed.

But the point was not to be lost in the humor—the virtual can never replace person-to-person, heart-through-hand-and-hug contact.

Whether the issue is physical space or virtual space, thoughtful people recognize that space is not only the setting for communication. Space itself communicates. It shapes our values and can deeply impact our ministries.

Here are a few practical points to apply:

Like stores and shopping malls, ministry spaces should be designed with intentionality. Take time to examine what values are being communicated by your church's space. What is central and heightened and magnified? What is completely absent? Are the values reinforced those you want to communicate?
Teach your congregation how the Bible places value on space and consider how your ministry space can better foster community centered on Christ through Word and Sacrament. How can your space combat some of the secular culture's un-Christlike values and divisions?
Has your congregation tended to neutralize sacred space? Many in the younger generation are attracted to sacred symbols, tactile experiences, and a more holistic engagement in worship. How might your ministry space reintroduce a sense of the sacred?
As you think about using new technologies to expand the church's ministry impact, how can you still foster face-to-face community? How can the church remain an "incarnate" community while using disincarnate technologies?

Paul Louis Metzger is professor of Christian theology & theology of culture at Multnomah Biblical Seminary in Portland, Oregon, and co-author of Exploring Ecclesiology (Brazos, 2009).