We’ve all heard it said until our ears bleed that ‘church is not the building.’ Great. Sure. Fine. But if we truly believe that then why does the rest of the world think that it is? We’re clearly not getting the message out there. So, do we need a new PR approach, or could it just be perhaps, that we still place too much emphasis on our buildings?

The big problem, as with most entrenched ideologies, is history. The historic weight of our practices, and the long stories that precedes our entrance to the stage, bear greater influence over our attitudes than we might think.

Moving from victim to victor

Throughout the entire Christendom era, the Church has asserted itself onto the landscape by imposing centralised places of worship. Right at the beginning of this time, Christian-converted Roman Emperor Constantine not only enabled Christians to worship publicly, but he also gave them resources to do so. He returned property that was confiscated during Diocletian persecution, he granted massive tax exemptions to Christians, and he built Christian basilicas throughout the Empire. These were often financed by pillaging pagan temples.

For any victim to suddenly be inundated with wealth and resources, especially when these are taken from their oppressors, there is going to be some significant and sudden personality changes as a result. The Church was no exception, and – in many cases if not almost entirely throughout Europe – for a time, very much enjoyed its special legal protections and favouritism.

Over time then (although, not that much really), ‘Church’ became synonymous with buildings rather than the gathered body of believers. There was an implicit idea that to meet with God meant you must go to church, and to be a Christian, therefore, was to simply be a regular church attendee. In fact, for most European Christians, this assumption has been the case for the vast majority of their institutional history.

That’s not an easy character arc to shake off.

Follow the money

The infamous link between church attendance and faith is also evident in Britain specifically. One place we can see this is in the amount of money tied up in the inherited church’s resources. The Church of England is one of the wealthiest landholders in the UK, with a £2 billion property portfolio and 100,000 acres of which makes up a significant portion of their £6.7 billion in assets. The amassing of this wealth can be traced back to early Christendom, which appropriated the Jewish practice of giving alms for the remission of sins. As Peter Brown said ‘even the most humble members of the Christian community were involved in this perpetual mobilisation of wealth.* This ensured a continual flow of wealth to the church, which – although diminishing quickly – continues to this day. The cultural conception that “church just wants our money” comes from a quantitative reality; one that is arguably an easier position to demonstrate than “church serves the poor.”

Throughout the Middle Ages there was a stark contrast between the wealth within and the poverty outside these imperialistic church buildings, and even today the steps of Cathedrals, especially in larger European cities, are still peppered with the poor. In 2015, Housing Justice lobbied the Church of England to sell its underused properties to respond to the housing crisis, issuing a report stating, ‘The Church cannot speak out on this or any other issue without putting its own house in order’. The legacy here is that church attendance was so tied up with what was considered ‘faith’ that most resources were channelled into the buildings rather than mission and serving the poor.

Again, this is not an easy identity to just shake off.

Is it a building, or a momument?

Church buildings today rarely connect with those outside and often serve as a monument to an apparently dying religion. In 2015 the Church of England reported 1926 closed buildings, making the God who resides inside seem irrelevant, inanimate and diminishing. They are often crumbling structures, which are locked for all but an hour a week, surrounded by smaller memorials to the deceased.

Inside, older British churches have uncomfortable, formal and awkward interiors that do not exist in any other public building save perhaps a courtroom, theatre, or classroom – each designed to give credence to just one voice at a time.

Problems increase when examining the symbols used throughout the older buildings, many of which is in memory of someone other than Jesus, including the often-imposing wall of military paraphernalia. The cross is sometimes absent, replaced with coded monograms such as IHS or XP. The absence of the cross uncovers darker problems as some cultures it represents conquest not self-sacrifice. These buildings and their symbols easily alienate society from the gospel message.

As much as the historian, artist, and contemplative-practitioner in me loves old church buildings, from a purely missional and service point of view they – when not utilized well – create a plethora of problems for the relationship between church and society today. They misrepresent gospel values, exhibit irrelevancy, disable participation, and are a testimony to imperialistic exclusivism.

Even if they ever were at the height of relevancy, the aesthetically beautiful and imposingly grand structures spoke to only parts of God’s character and allowed for very limited expressions of worship. Although newer church buildings are less of an issue, they are still often built with the same values, and may therefore still trigger the same responses in society.

Turning monuments back into movements

Addressing irrelevant and imperialistic buildings in a way that rediscovers mission requires church to consider gathering for worship in natural community spaces instead and repurposing older Church buildings as gifts to the community.

Different to the inherited church, many smaller groups are becoming demonstrably more successful within regularly used community spaces (parks, halls, pubs, schools, homes), than traditional church buildings. Familiar community spaces are usually easier to access and understand, they are usually more modular and better equipped for smaller community gatherings, and they don’t carry any stigmas left behind by Christendom. This reorientates church around people’s lives, making faith a natural and relevant part of their world. The best thing about this, however, is it leaves older church buildings available for other purposes – and to be a gift for the community.

Church buildings can be repurposed to become safer, more recognisable community spaces. Often large, central, and visible, churches can work well as cafes, art galleries and performance areas. Buildings can be a generous gift to an economically struggling society when the primary emphasis is taken off formalised worship and onto relationship building. Moving away from church buildings for expressions of church represents a go rather than come ethic, and repurposing buildings redeems the idea of a Christian from simply being a ‘church attendee.’

Moving church into natural community spaces while repurposing buildings, as a gift to the community should be a healthy way of responding to the imposition of irrelevant buildings left behind by Christendom. This again reconfigures church as a movement rather than an institution, with a clear, more consistent message delivered in accessible spaces.

 

Photo by Stefan Kunze on Unsplash

 

* Brown, P. (2013) The rise of Western Christendom: triumph and diversity, A.D. 200-1000. Tenth Anniversary Revised Edition Hoboken, N.J.; Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell; John Wiley [distributor]. (The making of Europe), p.69

Have you ever had a conversation with a young person that goes like this:

‘So, what are they teaching you about Christianity in school?’

‘Oh, that if you go to church and eat wafers then you’re going to heaven.’

‘Wait, they’re teaching you what?!?’

It’s natural to get outraged when someone minimalises or misrepresents something that you care about and understand well. It must be similar if you work in pharmacology and your friends are debating vaccines, or if you’re a mechanic and your mum wants to buy a mid-90s Peugeot!

When people mistreat knowledge that they think they have earned, they might be guilty of something known as the ‘Dunning-Kruger’ effect.

You might not know what you don’t know but think you know what you know… y’know?

In the early 2000s, psychologists David Dunning and Justin Kruger described a bias that lower-ability people have which overestimates their knowledge or skills to be higher-ability than they truly are.

Let’s say every fact you could learn about a thing is numerated, and you try to learn all the facts about that thing. You might believe, then, that there are 100 facts to be learned about a subject, of which you know 70, and that would make you quite knowledgeable about that subject. However, what if one of the things you haven’t learned yet is that there are, in fact, 200 things to learn about the subject? In which case you are far less knowledgeable about the subject than you thought you were. This would give you a bias of higher knowledge about a thing, when in reality it’s actually lower.

I think I’m pretty knowledgeable about Formula 1, for example. However, a few years ago I met British racing legend David Coulthard – and frankly he has forgotten more than I’ll ever know!

Put another way, we don’t always know enough to know what we do not know.

This is one of the reasons, for instance, why postgrad students are often more nuanced than undergrads. Or why research scientists are more cautious with their claims than popular scientists. It’s also why those who know are often the last to speak.

Fighting soundbites with spreadsheets

I’ll never forget that line in the West Wing when political operative Lou said to campaign manager Josh, ‘that’s what you get when you fight soundbites with spreadsheets.’

What are we more likely to remember (and by default assimilate), a long list of complicated and nuanced information, or a pithy one-liner? Even though there’s more information – and thus true power – in something like a spreadsheet, a cutting soundbite is like bringing an armoured tank to a knife-fight.

On the flip side, it’s easy to think that we’re learning how to knockdown an argument when all we’re truly doing is making the other person look silly. This is what a soundbite does. Donald Trump is a master of this kind of soundbite. When he doesn’t like a fact, a question, or a suggestion, he mocks the person he’s speaking to and then reduces their source into ‘fake news’ or something similar.

It doesn’t have to be this on the nose. A soundbite could simply be a memorable piece of analysis that we have taken out-of-context, not understood the nuances, and not earned the understanding to properly wield. It’s similar to ‘a smart person said this, therefore it’s true’, but it’s more like, ‘a [I think] smart person knows this, I have read it therefore I know it too, and I know it just as much as they do.’

It’s like if you scroll through Facebook and see a real expert in a field debating with someone who is posting multiple Daily Mail stories as evidence for their view. It’s a little cringy.

A slightly less flattering way of putting this is that this is what happens when you try to speak reason to stupid – or pick a fight with a drunk or a fool.

When hyper-focusing provides a false confidence

Feeling self-righteous yet? Me too. But we shouldn’t, because as Christians we can be even more guilty of this than most. I have been there enough times myself (and been wrong plenty) to know I’m probably still doing it too. Maybe even in this very piece.

When I was a first-year theology undergrad at Bible College we all had to study a module called ‘Christians in the Modern World.’ For the whole year we went through various philosophers, mostly from the Enlightenment, and deconstructed any potential part of their thinking that would stand in opposition to a Christian worldview.

I found the course immensely interesting, not least because I had always loved philosophy! And there were many interesting titbits of information and I’m sure that the professor knew the subject well.

However, I have since done two things: First, I have studied philosophy with Oxford University. This has given me a more grounded knowledge base of the subject we were studying. Second, I have revisited all the notes from my first-year class almost seventeen years ago to see what was missing.

We were presented most if not all these thinkers dramatically out-of-context from the broader movements in Philosophy, and from the particulars of what they more widely thought and added to their various disciplines. We were given the very worst of Hegel, Kant, Rousseau, etc. by hyper-focusing on aspects that we found distasteful. Not all of which were immediately applicable to our task either, but in some cases were just used to draw attention to the more questionable aspects of their characters.

Now, in one sense, understanding the broad landscape of philosophy, and placing all these thinkers into that wasn’t the purpose of the class. We were being ‘armed’ to speak into the philosophical roots of a modern culture where it is hostile to our faith. You should, after all, only usually get upset by something that misses a target it wasn’t aiming at.

However, two things. First, it did what we constantly criticised others for doing when they pluck aspects from the Bible out-of-context and focus in on what offends them. Second, for years I thought this class represented accurately who those thinkers were and what they thought. I had over-estimated my knowledge and left the course with a somewhat arrogant confidence in what I thought I knew.

Absolute truth vs absolute facts

As Christians we – I think rightly – believe we have an absolute truth. However, there is a significant difference between knowing Jesus, who is the absolute truth, to thinking this gives us some magic right to all the absolute facts about everything.

Knowing Jesus gives a matchless and rightly placed confidence. We don’t then need to know everything else better than anyone else. We, at no point, are called to know all the facts about everything – and nothing in our knowledge of Jesus should give us the right to assume we have a greater grasp of the possible facts.

I think, like in any other worldview, that our relationship with Jesus should naturally and rightly lead us to question things and challenge facts when they diverge from that worldview. That’s an important thing to do. However, our confidence in him should not be contingent on us winning every argument or knowing every fact. This is not only supremely arrogant, but also supremely ignorant. It’s not a good look.

I wonder how many people look at us talk about things we don’t really know about – or watch us when we overestimate our knowledge in an area – and then roll their eyes like we would a schoolteacher who reduces Christianity down to going to church and eating wafers.

Don’t be “that guy”

Youth worker, pastor, colleague; don’t be “that guy.” Don’t be the guy that has to correct everything all the time because you’re sure that you know better. Don’t be the guy that sends young people back to school with a half-assed, ill-equipped soundbite that’s just going to make them look silly and leave them exposed. Don’t be the guy who thinks he knows more about vaccinations than experts because he read something on a fundamentalist Christian website. Don’t be the guy who argues about the shape of the earth because he heard another guy said he did some research on it and ‘found’ that everyone else is wrong. Don’t be the guy that calls other passionate, knowledgeable people ‘liars’ because their worldview doesn’t line up with their own. Don’t be the guy that everyone rolls their eyes at.

Why? Because that’s doing your faith no favours! We’re given two significant commandments, a commission, and a tip.

• The two commandments are to love God and love people (Matt. 22:36-40).
• The commission is to tell other people about Jesus (Matt. 28:16-20).
• The tip is to always be ready to tell people why you hope in Jesus (1 Pt. 3:15).

Be that guy. The one who loves people, clearly loves God, and leads with that love and compassion over an insatiable need to always be right. Be the guy who tells people about Jesus – who He is, what He did, why He matters – over arguing about every picky socio-political-scientific issue. Be the guy who has a confident, quiet, firm, solid security in what he believes – over displaying a painful need for everybody to think exactly his way. Be that guy.

Why? Because you’ll be following the commandments you were actually given, you’ll be more loving, you’ll have more tangible faith, you’ll look more like Jesus, and you’ll share Him much much much more effectively.

It’s ok to not know everything! It’s not ok for you to pretend you do. Don’t be “that guy.”

 

(partially written as a ‘note to self’)

Photo by Jesse Martini on Unsplash