Dysfunctional Architecture
by David Schmidt
Several years ago when I was teaching strategic planning at a Willow Creek Association conference, a pastor came to me at the end of the first day. He was crestfallen.
Willow Creek's executive pastor, Greg Hawkins, and I had just spent the day equipping attendees to think strategically about the mission, vision and core values for their churches. We had been leaning hard into the critical connection between these guiding ideas and the pragmatic decisions facing church leaders--like architecture.
Clearly distressed, this pastor said, in essence, "I'm sick. We have just completed our new facility and are now in debt over $6 million dollars--and I think we built the wrong building."
He went on to describe the gap that had emerged in his thinking after a day of exposure to strategic thinking processes. The building they built better reflected their history and where they were--NOT the promise and potential of where they wanted to go, and who they wanted to reach. The new facility did not accurately reflect the emerging value in that church to put more resources into reaching unchurched people. It was a painful moment. Here was a pastor facing a mountain of debt with a sense that their church had purchased something that wasn't a good fit--and they couldn't return it for a refund.
Many faith communities today have inherited dysfunctional church architecture. But there are many others on the cusp of retaining an architect that has the potential to alter the trajectory of their church's future depending on how much strategic thinking has preceded the decision to build.
Dysfunctional church architecture has its tap root, not in a poorly chosen architect, cantankerous committee, too little money or anemic project management. Rather, dysfunctional church architecture often has its source in weak or unclarified answers to the questions that determine a church's destiny. If a vision community in a church shares a clear and common understanding of its role, vision and values, it will be easier to determine an effective architectural destination for itself. Without these core essential ideas acting as a rudder, the church runs the real danger of embracing architecture that actually inhibits its capacity to achieve its vision. The style can be appropriate to the time and place, and successful fund-raising can occur. But dysfunctional is dysfunctional even when there's nice curb appeal and all the pledges are paid.
Constricting Missional Intent
A church we know of recently moved into a new sanctuary complete with sweeping arches, baptistry and choir loft, vast amounts of ambient light from windows near the ceiling and unobstructed sight lines for every seat.
Now as this church tries to make a turn toward more contemporary worship, aspects of the facility fight them. The desire for lots of ambient light will require a costly solution when using video projection. The front of the sanctuary doesn't lend itself to the wide range of music, dramatic or liturgical expressions this church plans to embrace in the coming years. A square sanctuary creates an intimate wrap around seating arrangement--but doesn't allow for video screens to be installed without impacting capacity.
When originally designed, the sanctuary perfectly reflected where the church was coming from--but not where it was going. The decision to build this particular sanctuary was not tethered to any strategic thinking about future audiences, reaching the unchurched, role in the community or emerging worship styles. Ingenuity will allow them to recover to some degree--but at a high cost to both relevancy and finances. Missional intent gets constricted when buildings don't adequately reflect the desired or likely trajectory of a church.
In a visit to Cades Cove in Smoky Mountain National Park, you can visit a one room Methodist church, active throughout the 1800's. You gain entrance to the church through two doors in the rear--one for men and one for women. Ironically, the Methodists here didn't follow this custom of separating the sexes. But the church's founders, who built this church for $115 in 115 days, borrowed the plans from a church that did divide its people by gender. Form didn't dictate the theology or impact of this church--but it did impact how congregants entered their church. In this church's case, leaders were willing to compromise architectural form so that they might quickly get on with accomplishing the function of "being the church."
The Word of Faith Family Worship Center in Virginia rents a former bank facility complete with a drive up window. This church has adapted its functions to fit the form of the facility--by offering drive through prayer for motorists.
In both of these examples the form or facility itself dictated the way people function in it--with good outcomes. But sometimes the result is not so positive as a quickly built church or motorists finding accessible prayer support. Rather than acting as an enabler of mission, architecture can inhibit fresh thinking and expression, constricting energy for mission. Architecture, no matter how expressive, worshipful or contemporary can imprison minds and spirits when it is out of sync with the missional intent of a church.
To be an effective fifth column in ministry, even architecture should provide means for channeling the church's energies toward its objectives, shape the behaviors of individuals and facilitate the groupings of people that will build a biblically functioning community. Pausing for strategic thinking before breaking ground allows a church to bring its building into alignment with its vision for where it wants to go.
Organizing Around Attenders and Processes
The new Jewish Museum Berlin that just opened in Germany makes creative use of a long, negative or empty space to graphically depict a void of accomplishments and contributions that never occurred because of the deaths of Jews in the holocaust. In the Martin Luther King, Jr. museum in Atlanta, you literally "march" up a road with figures frozen in the times and dress of the mid-60's civil rights movement. Museums are highly intentional about creating environments that impact attenders and facilitate processes of touching them on every level. Good church architecture will do the same--organize around the people it is currently and likely to serve and the processes that are likely to be important to their spiritual formation.
This is a very different guidance system for making architectural decisions than the system that depends heavily on a funding and building a bigger, better or different wineskin to accommodate more of the same.
Strategic thinking and planning is really an act of good stewardship when it precedes facility development. Master planning and fund-raising is secondary to clear self-identity, role clarity and strategic thinking about the future function of a church in a community. I wonder how much ministry opportunity loss occurs because church leaders are boxed in by a facility that determined to launch strategic thinking and planning--"once we're in the new building."
As church champions we serve churches facing construction as we lead them to have solid answers to the question of role, vision, core values and the needs of younger and future audiences--before they build. It is much less a question of where church architecture is going and much more, where can this local church's architecture take it?
You can reach David Schmidt for dialogue and more information at: http://www.wiseplanning.net/ or by calling (630) 682-1990 CST.