Buildings: Who are we saving them for? Who are we saving them from?

When you start talking about the church being God’s and not ours, you start believing it. And when you start wondering ‘what is God’s dream for this place?’ you start thinking bigger than a once-a-week gathering.  There’s a lot of talk in clergy circles about how these aging buildings we’ve inherited are a burden and a pain, and I get it—coming up with the funds to maintain these old buildings is a big job, and I always feel like we’re just barely holding things together here at St Andrew’s.  But I also see our buildings as a gift from God and a gift from our ancestors in the faith.  We have space that is warm, light, safe and to top it all off—inspiring and beautiful.  We have space that was designed to hold a crowd.  We have space with bathrooms and a kitchen and room to gather.  We have space that makes people gasp the first time they see it because there’s something transcendent and special and holy about it. 

And it doesn’t feel like God’s dream is for it to sit empty 6.5 days of the week.

Today, in North Portland, people are living outside.  Lots of them.  They tell us about all the ways they survive (so much genius and creativity), and they still get cold.  And wet,  And tired. Opening God’s church so that God’s people can get warm and get some rest feels like the right thing to do.  Sharing the beauty we’ve inherited feels like the right thing to do.  Curating spiritual community beyond Sunday morning feels like the right thing to do.  Learning from, and being changed by, the people who come feels like the right thing to do.  Broadening our congregation’s concerns beyond what happens in the sanctuary Sunday morning feels like the right thing to do.  Finding communion at long tables behind the pews, over tater tot casserole and laughter and tears, feels like the right thing to do.  Making space for people to drop their bags of cans and their backpacks out of the rain feels like the right thing to do.  Welcoming dogs feels like the right thing to do.

When we treat our churches like the good china, then they become like the heavy boxes filled with Blue Danube that we have to lug from grandma’s house to mom’s garage to our own attic until finally we have to decide whether to keep it or give it away–this once-precious relic that was saved for the best occasions and saved from overuse and now is only a well-preserved symbol of past values.

God’s people need church buildings now.  Use will make our buildings scruffy.  But who on earth are we saving these churches for?