The Church Building is Pagan? - Part 2
Adapted from Chapter 2 of Pagan Christianity by Frank Viola and George Barna. Prior posts follow:
Introduction to Pagan Christianity
Traditions Passed Off as "Christian"
The Church Building is Pagan? - Part 1
Following the Constantinian
era, church buildings passed through various stages, but little changed with
the dominant architectural features that fostered a monopolizing clergy and an
inert congregation. If you follow the
development of the architecture of the church building throughout church
history, you see a reflection of man’s quest to sense the divine with his
physical senses. While aesthetic
experiences can surely turn the heart toward God, Christianity is about
connecting with God spiritually. By the
fourth century, the Christian community had lost touch with those heavenly
realities and spiritual intangibles that cannot be perceived by the senses, but
which can only be registered by the human spirit (see I Corinthians 2:9-16).
So really, who cares if we
meet in these types of buildings today? What’s the big deal as long as we’re
seeking God and fellowshipping together?
If you think this way, you are overlooking a basic reality of
humanity. Every building we encounter
elicits a response from us. By its
interior, it shows us what the church is and how it functions. This principle is expressed in the
architectural motto, “Form follows function.”
The social setting of a church’s meeting place is a good index of that
church’s understanding of God’s purpose for His body. Church buildings are not inherently bad. But, just like any atmosphere, they shape our
understanding and functioning of the body of Christ. At a deeper level, we have managed to
orchestrate much psychological and aesthetic experience in them that should
never be confused with spiritual experience that we are called to have in
Christ.
The next time you go into a
church building, translate the architecture by asking yourself how the form
affects the function. Notice how it’s
not designed for intimacy or fellowship.
Notice how open, participatory meetings where anyone is free to express
Christ are virtually impossible. Notice
how the idea of a church building encourages compartmentalization of church
life. Notice how it fails to encourage natural
and intimate connection with other believers. Notice how it encourages a denial of the
priesthood of all believers. Notice how
it is a contradiction of the very nature of the ekklesia – which is a
countercultural community. Notice how it
impedes the understanding and experience that the church is Christ’s
functioning body that lives and breathes under His direct headship. This characterizes Western Christianity. Worship is seen as something detached from
the whole fabric of life and packaged for group consumption.
The pulpit fosters a focus on
preaching as the central way to know God and grow spiritually as well as
elevating and placing the preacher above God’s people. The pew is a symbol of lethargy and passivity
that inhibits face-to-face fellowship and has made corporate worship a
spectator sport. The steeple comes from the notion that Christians have to
reach into the heavens to find God even though He is with us. In short, Christian architecture continues to
encourage the unbiblical division between clergy and laity and stalemate the
functioning of God’s people.
So, how did the early church
do it without buildings? There were
meetings in homes throughout the cities. Each home gathering contained roughly 30 to 35
people, but did not see itself as separate from the one church in a particular
city. The entire church in a particular
locality would come together for specific purposes in existing facilites by
renting or borrowing large spaces to accommodate everyone. When a gathering grew too large to gather in a
single home, it would typically multiply into separate home meetings, but see
itself as one church meeting in multiple locations.
Church leaders often quote
Hebrews 10:25 (“not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together”) when
telling members they should “go to church” on Sunday mornings. But, the New Testament vision of the church
meeting is one in which every member functions and participate in the
gathering. The church building defeats
this purpose by its architecture.
Real estate owned by
institutional churches today is worth over $230 billion. Church building debt, service, and
maintenance consumes about 18 percent of the $50 to $60 billion tithed to
institutions annually. The crazy thing
is, all of the traditional reasons for “needing” a church building collapse
under careful scrutiny. The truth is,
it’s nothing but overhead. That’s quite
a bit of money to sanctify brick and stone.
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