I love our new church building and I know that our church has seen a refocusing of its mission as we approach the “move-in day” sometime later this year.   I know that I’ve grown as pastor over these past seven years – or is it eight – that we’ve been building or planning to build.  But it has taken a lot of energy, a lot of our time, a lot of our focus.  I have to keep reminding myself that this is really not a very big building and it is our hope and our dream that this building will serve the missional needs of our congregation for many needs to come.  We're not building for just today but for 50 years from now, we've said.  At the same time, however, I realize that we have a lot invested in it and, for the sake of that future ministry, we’ll have a mortgage that we’ll be paying off for quite a few years.  There is a burden that comes with this.

It’s these thoughts that come into my head as I read the following:

Christians did not begin to build church buildings until about AD 200.  This fact suggests that, whatever else church buildings are good for, they are not essential for numerical growth or spiritual depth.  The early church possessed both these qualities, and the church’s greatest period of vitality and growth until recent times was during the first two centuries AD.  In other words the church grew fastest when it did not have the help—or hindrance—of church buildings.

That quote is from Howard Snyder’s book, The Problem of Wineskins:  Church Structure in a Technological Age, as recorded in Mike Slaughter’s book, CHANGE THE WORLD:  Recovering the MESSAGE and MISSION or JESUS.

I don’t believe this is a call to abandon our building, although, as I think about it, perhaps we could have done things a little differently along the way.  Perhaps we could have put in only the bathroom needed for the present size.  While it is a beautiful building, perhaps we could have gone with a much simpler architectural design.  Perhaps we could have waited one more year to begin the process of building so we could have gotten more funds on hand.  I'm sure there are always questions with any building project--whether it's your church or your business or your home.  But, now, I think the above sentiment is a call to reexamine how we’ll be using the facility.  Our purpose as “fishers of people” is not to get the “biggest net” in the water but, use the church as a mission outpost to get “many nets” in the water.  We need to see our building as a place to empower folks to go out in the community and bring the gospel message to those around them…and around us.  The building is not the goal of ministry but a tool for ministry.

I think that’s a fundamentally different way of looking at building use.