Tag: church buildings

Let us build a house

Floor to rafter: the nave ceiling of
St Mary Magdalene, Taunton, Somerset

Today’s hymn from Sing Praise is ‘Let us build a house where love can dwell’ by Marty Haugen. It’s a hymn about inclusion in the church, and about the church being more than its buildings.  As a recent report from the Church of England put it, Christians vary from being ‘Temple people’ for whom a beautiful building is of great importance to their worship and witness, to ‘Tent people’ for whom the building is nothing more than a temporary shelter to host the all-important task of proclaiming the Gospel. 

Marty Haugen comes across as more of a Tent person in this hymn.  There is indeed some memorable building imagery: rock and vault, wood and stone, floor to rafter (incidentally, the recently deceased American folk singer Nanci Griffith uses that exact phrase ‘floor to rafter’, also rhymed with laughter, in one of her songs: did one of them pinch it from the other?)  But there is much more imagery of the activities that our buildings should host: love and safety; hopes, dreams, visions and prophecy; a banqueting hall; peace and justice; healing, serving and teaching; songs, laughter and prayers. 

This balance is at the heart of my work for the Church, helping local congregations across Yorkshire care for historic buildings at the same time as encouraging sensitive adaptation of those buildings to the present and future needs of mission. If our buildings become museums of architecture then we’ve swung too far the wrong way, for the house of God should be both a house of prayer (as Jesus called the Temple) and a haven for all those in need of grace.

The Bible in a Year – 24 April

If this is your first viewing, please see my Introduction before reading this.

24 April. 2 Kings chapters 12-14

The next few chapters give a list of kings of Judah and Israel, many of whom only reigned for a short time before they were killed either in battle or by internal rivals. It was clearly a very unsettled time in the history of both kingdoms.

 

But at the start of this section is an extended story of how the money that was supposed to be set aside for repairing the temple in Jerusalem had not been used for that purpose for many years. Instead, it seems, it had been either used to make yet more silver and gold items (as if they did not have enough already) or simply taken by the priests for their own purposes.  So king Jeohash of Judah (confusingly, Israel had a king of the same name bout the same time) made a sealed chest to ensure that the money was set aside for the right purpose, and had the temple properly repaired.  The gold and silver, meanwhile, were used to pay off the Aramaeans and avoid another war for a while.

 

This interests me as my professional role involves repair of church buildings.  Local congregations are always advised to make sure their buildings are wind- and watertight and generally in good repair as a priority. In the Church of England they even have a legal obligation to have a surveyor or architect inspect the building every five years and make a list of repairs needed.  But it is all too common to find that a congregation goes for at least one, sometimes several five year period without carrying out any of the recommended repairs, while still finding money for other purposes.  Sadly, it often ends up with the church building needing hundreds of thousands of pounds spending on it, and being proposed for closure.

 

The worship of God, of course, does not require special buildings, and many Christians meet in people’s homes, hired halls, or conference centres depending on their numbers.  And if we do have church buildings, they should not be the prime focus of our activity – the work of the kingdom of God happens out in the community as much as in church.  But if we do have church buildings, God is interested in them being fit for purpose, be they great temples or tin shacks.

The Bible in a Year – 26 January

If this is your first viewing, please see my Introduction before reading this.

26 January. Exodus chapters 25-27

After Moses receives the law, and reads it to the people, their next task is to build the Tabernacle (a portable place of worship for this nomadic people). The instructions are detailed, and many of its elements were perpetuated in the later Temple of Jerusalem and can be seen in Jewish or Christian places of worship to this day.  The Ark which contained the book of the law, and symbolically the presence of God, is still the focus of the synagogues; and an altar (or communion table) the focus of most churches, where the sacrifice of Jesus rather than of sheep and oxen is remembered.

 

Some churches retain the pattern of outer court, holy place and “holy of holies” in the division of the building into nave, chancel and sanctuary with its fixed altar, while others consider that Jesus intended to abolish this pattern, and their buildings are a simple space where people can gather informally for prayer, singing and preaching with a portable table for the communion.  Neither is “wrong” and the two different approaches represent the tension in worship between God as the ‘holy other’ and God as living among us as our Father and friend.  What Moses’ Tabernacle does remind us, though, is that we are a “pilgrim people” and the building should never be an end in itself, or the people resistant to change.  God calls us to journey with him both literally, and in our life of faith. As Richard Giles titled his much-read book on church architecture, we should always be “re-pitching the tent”.