Hi Friends,

I went on a tour of a church building this weekend.

It was the 100 year anniversary of the building, and the congregation was celebrating by hosting an “Architectural Tour”. The guide was the architect who headed up the building’s restoration.

We Evangelicals don’t typically put a lot of thought into our church spaces. Efficiency is the name of the game. A great coffee bar is often of greater importance than the beams in the ceiling (and when I’m late to church with my bunch of crazy boys, I can’t argue with the wisdom of that).

Although it was new to me, I was captured by the care and attention this church gave the whole process: both the building’s restoration and the celebration of its 100th birthday.

Every artistic detail was attended to with care when the building was restored by the church. The wood wrapped steel beams. The stenciling on the ceiling. The woodwork at the altar. The preservation of the immense stained glass windows.

The architect who restored it is a congregant of the church. The craftsman who worked on the reconstruction of the altar is another congregant.

I couldn’t help but think of the artisans in the Bible who, commissioned by God Himself, worked skillfully to make the tent of meeting and the Ark of the Covenant.

It meant something to Him.

I also see how they’ve loved their neighbors in their attention to the building. This body of believers, meeting in a towering buiding in the middle of a Kansas City neighborhood, has taken great care to preserve the stone walls and slate roof. The congregation’s attention to beauty is like a gift to the homes and pedestrians who see it every single day. They could have spared the expense, but they didn’t.

I can’t help but see something of our generous, detail-attending God in that.

Now, I’m not suggesting we all have to worship in cathedrals. Actually, not even this congregation would say that. There is another campus of this church, and they joyfully meet in an old Hobby Lobby.

But maybe there’s something of value in beautifying the spaces in which we worship, whatever that looks like. Maybe it does mean something to the One who is known as the “Builder and Maker” of a city to come.

Unfinished thoughts here, in many ways because they are new thoughts to me.

Have you ever worshipped somewhere the building was meaningful in some way? I’d love to hear about it ♥️

— Anna