Worth the Cost?

For you always have the poor with you, and you can show kindness to them whenever you wish; but you will not always have me. - Mark 14:7 (NRSV)

The Lord said to Moses: 2 Tell the Israelites to take for me an offering; from all whose hearts prompt them to give you shall receive the offering for me. 3 This is the offering that you shall receive from them: gold, silver, and bronze… 8 And have them make me a sanctuary, so that I may dwell among them.  - Exodus 25:1-3, 8 (NRSV)

I saw that a congregation completed a new sanctuary. It cost them $90 million. This got me to thinking about church buildings and their cost and what they signify. So, to give some perspective I Googled “How much would it cost to build a medieval cathedral today?” Here are two of the answers I found:

 St. Peter's is the most renowned work of Renaissance architecture and one of the largest churches in the world.  the Great Construction of the present Basilica, replacing the Old St. Peter's Basilica of the 4th century AD, began on 18 April 1506 and was completed on 18 November 1626, almost 120 years to built so knowing the fact this project can take a lot of money according to my estimate around 600 million Dollars or may be more.

My guess would be in the neighborhood of $3/4 - 1 billion.  The National Cathedral in Washington DC was built from 1907-1990 and cost $65 million.  Figuring the cost of living during these years versus today and assuming an equal amount of work was paid for each year.  Add on the increased cost for more stringent building codes and the much higher cost of land.  Of course, the National Cathedral is one of the larger cathedrals.

We Christians, and I believe most of the world’s great religions, spend vast amounts of money and other resources to build our temples, cathedrals, shines, and places of worship. We have done so for, I would guess, as long as we have had any sort of organized religion. The question that haunts me is why? Why do we feel we must spend vast resources to build edifices for our faiths? What motivates us and what do we hope to gain from them?

Before I go any further I must confess a bias. I believe that buildings built for the sole purpose of worship are a relic of the past. If I were starting a community of faith today I would not build a building unless it was to serve a particular ministry in the neighborhood to those who live there. I would only build if the campus were to be used every day to serve and minister to those around it. A part of the space could be used for the purpose of worship when that was to happen but it would not be its sole purpose.

I understand the need to invest time, money and resources into the campuses we already have when it makes sense to keep those assets for mission and ministry with, to, and for the people who live near them. If we have no such ministries and missions then those campuses need to be looked at from the vantage point of how they might be utilized for service of the area where they are located. But to keep a campus just because it is a place of worship is bad stewardship and I think unfaithful.

I believe that in the past people funded and built these places of worship for reasons that no longer apply. They were seen as honoring God. They were ways to profess your faith. They were seen literally as the “house of God” on earth. Funding them was a way to earn indulgences (an indulgence is "a way to reduce the amount of punishment one has to undergo for sins") for yourself or those you love. And they were ways to sanctify a place considered holy. They were meant to create a space where the presence of God was felt and the faith honored.  Most if not all of these reasons no longer seem relevant or even theologically sound. God doesn’t seek an elaborate space for honor or housed or as payment for sin or need a special space to be felt. God wants us to be inspired by creation and one another. God is honored when we accept and love each other. God is housed in each part of creation and is celebrated when we protect and preserve creation. God loves us as we are and does not expect a payment for us to earn favor or receive forgiveness.

$90 million or $1 billion or even a modest $1 million seems like a lot of resources to expend just to have a building to sit in to worship God. Don’t get me wrong. I love to walk into a massive cathedral. To stand in the muted glow of a glorious stained glass window. To hear a grand organ, belt out a Bach mass. I have felt God in sanctuaries and shines and am thankful for these glorious spaces. But I have also had those same feelings and experiences on the lakeshore at camp, standing by the ocean celebrating communion, sitting under the stars in a Taize worship experience, listen to a concert in the park, and when a community of faith gathers for worship in a gym or a restaurant or a hotel ballroom. Faith communities always should have spaces but not spaces for the sole purpose of worship. James says: The very moment you separate body and spirit, you end up with a corpse. Separate faith and works and you get the same thing: a corpse.  - James 2:26 (The Message) which I think applies to what I am trying to say. A building just for worship is faith without works, a body without spirit.

I hope that we can come to the place where we can see buildings like a Christian community that formed in the Arlington, Virginia after World War II known as the Church of the Savior did. They never had a church building for the sole purpose of worship. In fact, they really were a network of specific ministries addressing specific needs in the greater Washington, D.C. area. They had a coffee house before Starbucks, they operated a bakery, they ran a children’s home, etc. Each place focused on a specific ministry and when they worshiped as a community they did it in the coffee house, in the bakery, in the dining hall of the children’s home. I think this is the model for a faith community. So if we want to invest $90 million in a building let’s build apartments for low income families, a coop and training day care campus for single parents in a poor urban area, a farm that uses the best sustainable practices and teaches others how to use them, a manufacturing plant in West Virginia that uses old plastic to make bricks for building low cost structures, or as a loan pool for micro loans to poor people throughout the world to start small businesses for themselves, their families, and their villages.

Doing these things honors God, shows how faithful we are, inspires people, houses God, and are places where the holy can be known and experienced and they can also provide space for worship!

Dear God, help me to see all that I have and know that you call me to be the best steward of it that I can be. Help me to experience you in all places. Help me to honor you with all I say and do. Help us all to realize that you love us as we are and that you don’t need a grand façade because you live in each act of love and compassion. Amen.