Absolutely, positively, without a doubt ... church buildings are an incarnational presence in a community. I would go beyond the views of the author and say that they can be such a presence in ANY community.

The problem that we encounter in the traditional church comes when our worship and adoration shifts from the things of our faith to the building itself. Maintenance, improvements, renovations ... the temptation toward being lavish ... all of these things creep into the church when it develops a "permanent home" for itself. We tend to create those "sacred cows," declare certain portions of the buildings as "off limits," and soon forget that the structures that we utilize for church are simply that - structures. They are tools to be used in spreading the Gospel.

I learned my life-lesson about church buildings during my brief work among the Maasai people in Kanya. I recently wrote about it here: http://missionmpossible.blogspot.com/2006/11/church-buildings-church-vision-maasai.html

It was their desire to see a church "roof" on every high hill in their land. They wanted people to be able to see a church building from any place in Maasailand where they may be standing. That was their idea of an incarnational presence. And their buildings were definitely not all that special. They did not invest millions. They were simple open-air, truss roofs with tin on them, home-made benches inside, and the Spirit of God all around.

I think that sometimes we are just a bit too postmodern, artsy, and wealthy for our own good. In fact, we are so wealthy that we have all of this time to waste upon pondering our own significance and deciding how much more "missional" we are than everyone else.

The simple reality is that incarnational, missional Christianity takes many forms. If you don't have a building, fine. If you do have a building, great. But don't ever think that your way is the only way, or even the best way. The moment that you start to, you take that step toward the mire of church decline and death in which so many of our churches in North American are now wallowing ... and perishing.

Would anybody, ANYBODY say it's wrong for a church to have a building?

I haven't met them. And I wonder if anyone who has transmitted the faith from one generation to another would say that owning a building was a major problem. Buildings are hardly the greatest obstacle we face in following Jesus.

In the 90's and to this date today there are churchs who don't have buildings anymore, but rather "campuses."
So how does one distinguish between having a building for the Church to do Churchy things, and a Pastor/elder's board having an expensive Edifice Complex that the laity are brow beaten to support?

Reba Place Church and Fellowship began in a three story house fifty years ago (1957) with three people. By 1970 there were about 35 people, living communally and still meeting in the living room of that house. In the 1970s as the fruit of a charismatic renewal the community began to numerically expand. Many lived in nearby apartments until it became apparent that pooling their resources and buying the building would be better stewardship than renting. But we outgrew the living room and so purchased an abandoned storefront which doubled as a nursery school during the week. In the early 1980s we outgrew the nursery school and bought a building across the street (an old bus garage). In the 1990s that building housed a Sunday morning worship gathering of about 350 with 30 small house groups that met during the week. We started a sister community in nearby Chicago that met in an apartment building until last year when they also moved into a storefront location. Thirty years ago Howard Snyder was talking about the church's "edifice complex" and there can still be that problem today. Although I cannot believe that Reba Place is any less missional than we were fifty years ago, in spite of our buildings.

It's not the building that is the obstacle, but the use of the building. Wouldn't it be best to have a building that is used on a dialy basis for connecting with the community? Or for that matter used by the community to create a greater community. I'm one who has concern for the large buildings erected by church bodies only so they can fit more people into their congregation. When we look at the American church culture we've created it is antiquated compared to the direction the world is taking. Unfortunately it is not even close to being counter-culture.

I believe it is for this reason that house, or simple churches are becoming popular. They are effective as long as they do not become the mini-me of the larger body. This is why we have the emerging and organic church movement happening. Some say people want things to be simple, but I see it differently. For decades the Church has called on God to bring revivial, but my sense is that God wants transformation. Out of that transformation will come revival, or maybe better an awakening.

Chad is correct in stating that "buildings are hardly the greatest obstacle we face in following Jesus." Yet, the building is indicative of the institutional church culture we've created and of the way our Christian leaders think. When will the paradigm shift?

I would resist a building at every turn because it does have some great negatives associated with it as well as positives.

One of the greatest struggles is that it limits our imagination and binds us to something.

So for me/us a building would be a huge decision.

Having said that I reckon David makes a very decent case here for how buildings can serve incarnational mission. Its just keeping the focus that will always be the issue - but then that's what leaders are for right?!

I would have to say that while buildings don't necessarily have to be an obstacle to following Jesus, we typically make them that way by our extravagence and short-sightedness. Before I would consider taking part in another building project, I would have to determine just how the building would be used in order to justify the expense. If just to meet once or twice a week like most church buildings, my vote would be a resounding "no." However, if it could better serve the community, could be used as a mission training center, pre-school, youth center, etc., and it integrated other uses which both welcomed and aided outsiders, then I would begin to consider it.

Our current plan is to build a new shelter for homeless children in a developing country where we have established a mission. It will not only house street kids, but will serve as a school for them and provide them with vocational training as well, it will be used as a medical clinic by a hospital here in the states which we are partners with in mission, will house missionaries while they are there, and maybe, just maybe we'll be able to hold worship services there if there is room. I think it defines a justifiable missional building--much more so than some of the finance-draining church building projects I've been involved with at home.

Too many church buildings go up with little or no God-given vision for their purpose, but just as another clone of a system that has grown far too cumbersome and inefficient.

David...great points. You were very nuanced and pointed out communities such as Solomon's Porch which I have visited. They have "resurrected" the rubble of Christendom if you will and transformed it into a massive living room of "small rounds" forming a larger round. Everthing their makes a theological and even political statement.

However, I don't think missional churches should get into buildings that require mortganges. Once we go into paying off a building in the hopes of owning it, we actually don't own the building it ends up owning us! Even worse we then get trapped into what all good white suburbanites do, fill their homes (which own them) with all the techno-cultural trappings for the sake of comfort and in the church "relevance".

My church would fall under the descriptor of missional/emerging and we rent out the town community center, placing us right in the heart of downtown. We also move into other locations during the year like the park, etc. I am going to visit some missional church planters soon that have started missional church communities that are a coffee shop or pub and host artists, etc and also host the marginalized community to do their laundry, cook meals (with them) and use it for shelter after closing hours.

We have to be "discerning" when utilizing buildings and go for functionality, not shock and awe (lest we make the mistake that sinks us into the quagmire)

Everyone has building. Someone is paying for that building. Coffee shop, home, community center, another church. Unless you meet in out of doors you have building. Even if you change locations repeatedly you are using someone else's building. Someone is paying for utilities, taxes, up keep. So the argument is not over if a building is good or not, it is whether you want the added headache of ownership.

I understand the dread some have of owning a building, and the romance of meeting in homes, but it's just more practical to have a building. Yes, there is a strong risk of developing a "if we build it, they will come," but having been a missionary in Brazil, a full-time parish minister and a participant in a house church (not in that order) I still prefer having a permanent location that doesn't belong to any one member or family. It just more practical. With a building you have someplace to put your "stuff," and no one has to play host or worry that other people's kids will break your family heirlooms. Besides, a church building in a community can be a definite way for the church to be incarnational, showing the presence of the Christ to the neighborhood. What will make that happen is what the church that uses the building does on a daily basis elsewhere.

It has been frustrating to see our church change from a small and growing congregation in the late 90's to a stagnate, slowly shrinking, increasingly closed communion. I think our new building has contributed to this. Back when we met at the VA, setting up and breaking down a PA and folding chairs each Sunday, we were also more involved in ministry outside the four walls of our rented room.

Now we have our own place. It's paid for, and it's a nice, functional, completely unattractive structure.

Now the elders get upset if something is spilled on the carpet and we have all kinds of rules about where kids can go and what can they do and about who has a key and who can use what room -- and our church life is now more about our property than it is our mission. We also have endless meetings and countless programs -- people are expected to come to us, rather than us going to them.

Our Sunday attendance has dropped by 40% in the last 4 years. We've been in the building 6 years. While we have other problems in the areas of effective leadership and unity of purpose, I think we've allowed our building to make us complacent.

I'm guessing our case is an extreme example. I'm hoping it is, anyway.

I don't think a building is a bad thing, just don't let it cause you to lose sight of your mission beyond the walls.

Here is a monkey-wrench to throw in the cogs of thinking:

What would you say to believers in areas of the Former Soviet Union, such as the Ukraine, Moldova, etc.. who actively pursue and desire to buy buildings to have churches in? Would you tell them that it is wrong to have a building? Or would you tell them to only meet in homes and not have a a huge cross on their church door?

I deal with this day in and day out as I am in contact with Russian and Ukrainian believers all the time and they tell me that want to have a church building and are trying to buy as many as they can because for them there is a very important reason.

You see, the Communists, during the Cold War, burned down and removed churches, the very visible part of the Church. While Christianity held on underground and than revived after the collapse of Communism, many feel the need to have a building of their own, a place, a building! Many of them feel it is their way of showing those who would dare try to stamp out Christianity that they cannot remove them and that they are still here. Much like the Maasi of Kenya, stated above, the Russians want to show other Russians that unlike other religions, Christianity is here to stay.

So we cannot say that church buildings are wrong. In many cases they are a witness to the surrounding community the vitality and strength of the Body of Christ. Something that has made me think a lot about.

Blessings,

So how do you know when the building is big enough or too many people are attending? How many of you pastors have decided that a small church is best and you have a numerical limit to your attendees? Let's say 50. So when the 51st person walks in the door you say, "Sorry, we are a small gathering and want to keep it that way so you'll have to either find another group or start your own. After all, God only operates in small groups."

I was just reading in Acts about the three thousand believers who were added in one day to the true church and how they not only broke bread and ate together in each other's homes, but "Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts." (acts 2:46) Interesting.

I do know a perfect solution for keeping most churches small, building or not. Just start preaching about living a moral Godly life in genuine holiness and grounding your gathering in the Word and only those who are truly serious about their relationship with God will remain. Each church will quickly find it's own perfect size. Problem solved.

There are plenty of places already available for corporate worship,even in the traditional sense
What is needed for the church to truly become missional is for it to go into the world, and atrractional churches, even when they are evangelistic, by their very nature limit a congregation's ability to efficiently carry out that mission. It's a shame that the church as a whole can't work together, utilize the existing buildings more efficiently, and team together as one for missional outreach. Doing so would pool resources, both financial, as well as collective skills and talents necessary for successful missions.

"One positive thing about the end of modernity is that truth cannot be held captive by the rational, the strictly representational, or the logocentric. It must be embodied. So we who live in these times naturally resist any attempts to strip truth of its embodiment. Missional living, we say, must be incarnational."

I have no idea what that is supposed to mean. If postmodernity is so great, then why is it so confusing?

It is wonderful to watch God at work, I have enjoyed reading posts and the only conclusion I can come to is that it is not important where you are but where God has you.

I visited a church in Michigan last year and they had a large foyer that was built with the expectation of becoming smaller through the years as the worship area walls were moved into it as the congregation grew.

We all know that the future holds for us a Church without walls, God's prescence in every nook and cranny. I myself am looking for the time where no man will need to tell his neighbor about God for all shall know Him from east to west.

Since 1973 when Christ pleased to reveal Himself to me ( You know, born again ) I have seen ( and a lot of you have also ) many churches, home groups and communities rise and fall as evedince to God's " Not by power, nor by might but by my Spirit sayeth the Lord."

Christian books and artifacs can be bought at many nearby stores and numerous online avenues. Christian music is plentyful across America and, at least in my area.., many, many churches. What I find as a rule though, ( and maybe it's just me}, many churchgoers know a lot about their church but not so much about the Living God.

As a summery and back to the point; I realy do think that it is not important where a person is as to where God has her or him. We are His buiding, collective and individual. Our impact to our surroundings reflect the impact of our God through Jesus Christ. " He that has been forgiven much, Loves much." Perhaps some have not come face to face with the self-seperated self that Jesus came to reconcile... now that's forgiveness.

Dear Truth Seeker, I would tell people in Russia the same thing I would tell anyone, anywhere regarding anything. " Go talk to God about it, that's why Jesus shed His blood so that we could.", "Now if you want my opinion about a situation, ask me."

What's important is those that don't know that, not those that do.

The issue is not whether or not we have a church building. The issue is the hearts and attitudes of the people meeting together for "worship." I put it in quotes because some churches have turned their buildings into idols. Some have made the fact that they meet in homes into idols. Buildings are a great ministry tool, but only if the hearts of those meeting within are beating at one with Christ. That, indeed, would make a great church irregardless of where it was meeting.

Dear Chuck,
I believe the quote you refer to is describing the normal Christian desire that Jesus came to fulfill with Himself, that being... a spontaneous moment by moment conscious infusion with and brought about by the blood of the Lamb.

His Holy Spirit really counseling us in our relationship with the Father through Christ to expose who the only Life is in us to the point, as us, and of course " unless two agree, can they walk together?" or, will a kingdom divided stand?

A light outside a bushel has been given within it's environment all that it needs to produce the light, it must only be willing to burn as in " unless you lose your life...." or " unless you leave your mother, father, wife, children, house......"

All this is brought about a by the work of the Living God as we experience a Love relationship with Him that at one time we could only hope for.

If the Apostle Paul was taught "embodying" the church before the world, he some how left out the need for buildings to play a part in that. I know it's hard to read the scriptures without all of our tradition/institutional baggage of the prime necessity of special buildings for church life, but we are capable of it. The key to embody Christ to the world is for bodies to display the temple attributes of Christ's presence. We ARE the temple. Buildings distract from that. They lead saints into crowd oriented gatherings dominated by hired expert driven programming. The NT teaches participation driven gatherings dominated by intimate relationship. This demands small groups that fit nicely in a home. The lure of substitutes for God's revealed design for HIS body are tempting.