Church Architecture for the 21st Century

A futurist speculates about church buildings that will embrace new ways of learning

by Leonard Sweet

I received a card in the mail. On the front was a picture of blue-marble planet Earth dangling in the blackness of outer space.

Inside the card was printed: "Wish you were here."

That card speaks volumes about the challenge facing church architecture today. What planet can a church be living on when it puts up a multimillion-dollar education wing with fiber-optic cable but without the kind of space that will accommodate new structures, tools, and methods of learning?

One day the trustees of that church may have to answer a God who asks: "Now tell me this again: On the verge of the 21st century, you spent millions of dollars to teach children about my Son, using blackboards, boxy classrooms, and lecture-drill-test methods of instruction?"

A Revolution of Space
The Protestant Reformation that followed the invention of the Gutenberg press in the 16th century ushered in an architectural revolution. To move the church into a print culture, in which people could read instead of simply absorbing what others told them, required massive changes in spaces that would be used for worship and teaching.

Today we are undergoing another kind of spiritual awakening as the church undergoes a postmodern Reformation from print to screen. That revolution can't happen without altering the physical space of the church. What might postmodern church architecture look like? Here are my Ten Commandments of Architecture for the Postmodern Church:

10. Thou shalt not make a graven image. Too much of our church architecture is "egotecture," designed to honor a person, school of design, or principle. Architecture for the postmodern Reformation is designed for recycling. It's egalitarian, mobile, and adaptable for multiple use.

Of course, you are not just putting up a building when you build a church; you are constructing sacred space. But that doesn't mean that space can't have more than one purpose.

We're already living in multifunctional spaces. Kitchens are filled with interactive appliances, and family rooms contain everything from computers and entertainment centers to sofa beds and treadmills. Likewise, our churches should be adaptable to the changing needs of the 21st century.

One of the most important things to learn about the postmodern age is that opposite things happening at the same time aren't necessarily contradictory. If church architects want to avoid creating graven images, they must discover a way to incorporate the dynamic tension between opposites, such as innovation and tradition, improvisation and structure, transiency and permanence.

The best image for bringing opposites together into one is the fountain. A fountain is always changing, yet always staying the same; always moving, yet always still; there is rest in movement, yet movement in rest. Capture the dual nature of the fountain in your architecture, and you won't build a graven image that subsequent generations will have to labor under.

9. Thou shalt not create ugliness. Beauty in churches is not an indulgence. Architecture that is beautiful is good for the soul.

Ancient Rome's most influential architect, Vitruvius, said in his manual On Architecture that a building should have the qualities of (1) commodity, (2) firmness, and (3) delight. By commodity, he meant user-friendliness. By firmness, he meant integrity: the building does what it says it does—it doesn't fall down or leak. By delight, Vitruvius meant joy and beauty.

For commodity, firmness, and delight to come together in a church, a team is required. Architect, sculptor, painter, electrician, and bricklayer must work together from the very beginning to develop the kind of beauty that fosters healing.

8. Thou shalt design for all senses. According to a science called "neurolinguistic programming," people receive and interpret messages at least three ways: through sight, hearing, or feelings. In the Spring 1986 issue of Leadership, Mark Brasler explains how worship can be enhanced by appealing to more than one sense. "We should try to include, to some degree, all three elements in each service," he writes. "A visual church can make sure its music program appeals to the listeners. It might also designate as greeters those warm (touch-oriented) persons among them. The possibilities are many. And so are the benefits."

In much the same way, architects could design church spaces that encourage people to use more of their senses than just sight or hearing. Think of the possibilites if architects were to consider the five senses not in isolation from one another but in harmony with each other.

God gave us five senses for a reason. People need to look, to listen, to touch, to taste, and to smell when they are praising God.

7. Thou shalt have a sense of place. When a Japanese manufacturer was asked by his North American counterpart, "What is the best language in which to do business?" the man responded: "My customer's language."

We must learn to speak the language of the place where we are, and that necessitates architecture that speaks different languages of form. This means that in today's electronic world, church architecture must come to terms with screens.

Perhaps the best way to look at screens today is to see them as an updated version of stained-glass windows. The screen is the stained-glass window of the postmodern age. It is where the stories of the faith are taught and told. It is where people of today are learning about God and life and the Bible.

It took 40 years to get the overhead projector out of the bowling alley and into the church sanctuary. We can't afford to wait that long to get the screen and the computer into our ministries. Students who work or play on home computers already expect IT (interactive technology) as a learning tool.

Television, telephones, and computers are merging into a single entity that makes distance learning, better known as "distributed learning," more feasible. With this technology, churches around the world could use video phones and video conferencing to do Bible studies and interact with other churches studying the same book.

6. Thou shalt get real. The traditional construction of many churches today makes it difficult to achieve face-to-face interaction. Sit-and-soak worship spaces create pew potatoes. But religion is not a spectator sport. Architects must lead the way in teaching us how to design for interactivity.

Churches need spaces that inspire casual social meetings and facilitate creativity, synergy, and serendipity. Window seats and round tables, for example, bring people together, whereas long corridors and long rooms keep people apart.

The architectural implications of this new thinking include:

A new look for the pastor's study. Like business offices that now look like living rooms, hotel lobbies, or outdoor cafes, the pastor's study will become a place that promotes, not polices, creativity, innovation, and openness. It will enable, not embalm, face-to-face meetings. It will be both cave (territorial) and commons (nonterritorial), encouraging structure and spontaneity. Perhaps the pastor's office will be a combination of a book-culture study with a screen-culture studio.

A change in Christian education space. Postmodern electronics-focused kids learn differently from their print-oriented parents. Screens are an integral part of the new learning environment. But screens aren't just what you look at. They're also interactive; you talk to your screen, and it will talk back.

Postmodern churches that encourage interactive learning might include:

• TV monitors and projectors suspended from the walls with computer-generated images and surround sound;
• An electronic-blackboard system that copies what is written on the blackboard directly into class laptop computers;
• Live presentations sent over the network, allowing staff working in nurseries or other places in church the option of watching from their ministry zones.

5. Thou shalt build a living church. The guiding principles of modern architecture were logic, utility, modern materials, and structure. The guiding principles of postmodern architecture are simultaneity, synchronicity, immateriality, immediacy, and globality.

That means a lot of churches have a long way to go, suggests Richard Webb, a Gen-X staff member for the Division for Congregational Ministries for the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. Where else but in churches do postmoderns experience architectural spaces with hard benches, dark woods, and elevated presiders? he asks. Only in courtrooms, which are known for judgment; and funeral homes, which harbor death.

If churches are to become in architecture what they are in theology—health centers, waystations on the holiness highway—then we must move to more organic, living architecture. If we design for health and healing, we will be using curved and organic forms, undulations, and softer, wetter architecture. It is a healthy sign to see atriums, arches, and domes come back into sacred space.

4. Thou shalt get the church out of doors. Christianity could be described as the first nontemple-based religion. Certainly a primary characteristic of early Christianity was its radical decentralization. For the earliest Christians, people created sacred space, not architecture.

Postmodern architecture could take a cue from Saint Fiacre, patron saint of gardeners, to free the church from being shut up inside and to create new cloisters which, in Dante's words, form "a grand staircase between Heaven and Earth."

In this type of architecture, outdoor amphitheaters will be as common to postmodern churches as side chapels were to modern church complexes. The church of the future will include extensive gardens: sky-oriented spaces and places; shady nooks, basking places, star-viewing perches. The church will bring sky and water together in still pools and biological ponds, and earth and sky together through obelisks, statues, and tall trees.

3. Thou shalt love thy setting. Henri Lefebvre wrote in 1978, "Space is never empty; it always embodies a meaning." Part of the postmodern emphasis on space is environmental responsibility. The postmodern church must strive to produce Earth tenants who live in sync with their environment.

Houses are being built today that are nestled into graded earth so that the home is as much a garden as a structure. Why not do the same with churches? In classic double-ring fashion, the postmodern church will be more high-tech, yet more natural. It will use raw materials that come from sustainable resources and are recyclable, affordable, and easy to maintain. There will be less reliance on electricity and fixtures that use mercury, halogen, and other toxic materials and more on letting in natural light and converting solar power.

2. Thou shalt build smart churches. Behind the choir at a church in Hillsongs, Australia, is a stained-glass window. The window is constantly changing because the colors are generated by a computer that adjusts the hues to fit the music and mood of the service.

The church of the 21st century will include other "smart materials," such as windows that change from transparent to near-opaque for light control. By "smart," I mean materials into which artificial nerves and muscle are inserted, giving them a kind of primitive intelligence.

What would it mean for architects to view every surface, every wall in a church as a living organism that responds to human touch? As the science of holography develops, architectural space could become almost totally electronic, making it possible for a congregation to listen to a sermon and actually feel like it was traveling the road to Emmaus or walking by the sea of Galilee.

1. Thou shalt create new God-glorifying spaces. Postmoderns go to cafes to have a human experience. They go to church to have a God experience. In the modern era, preaching was the art of writing a sermon. In the postmodern era, preaching has become the art of creating an experience of God.

The essence of architecture is the imbuing of matter with spirit until the spirit is uplifted. The importance of harmonics would be no surprise to those who built a temple on the Acropolis in Athens, the temple of Paestum in southern Italy, or the cathedral at Chartres in France. Each is a musical masterpiece.

A Summary of Law
Annie Dillard once asked, "What is the difference between a cathedral and a physics lab?" Her answer was: "Are they not both saying Hello?"

In much the same way, I propose a summary of the Ten Commandments of Architecture for the Postmodern Church: "Provide the sky in which souls may soar."

Taken from Sweet's SoulCafe, 1998, Volume 3. Leonard Sweet is a prolific writer, conference lecturer, and church consultant.

Copyright © 1999 by the author or Christianity Today International/Your Church Magazine. For reprint information call 630-260-6200 or e-mail yceditor@yourchurch.net.
May/June 1999, Vol.45, No. 2, Page 10

	Subcategories of Building & Transportation
	Architects Builders & Contractors Buses, Vans & Cars Construction Management Gymnasium Resources Pre-Engineered Buildings Property Vendors Modular Buildings Other Roofing Signs Stained Glass Windows Steeples