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The building in which Emanuel Lutheran Church is located was built in 1878 and is a classic example of German-American church architecture of the period. If you go across town to St. John the Baptist Church, you will find a Roman Catholic version of Emanuel, built by German Roman Catholics.
The sanctuary of Emanuel is up a flight of stairs. In its early days, the stairs were a tight spiral, and I have wondered how anyone managed to bring caskets up those stairs and into the nave of the church for funerals. Today the stairs are straight and more accessible for all purposes. And, of course, there is a lift for those who require it. The pews in the sanctuary are fixed to the floor as church pews have mostly been. They face forward in parallel rows. There is a center aisle and side aisles, a chancel with altar (s) in the front and a balcony and choir loft in the rear with pipe organ and synthesizer. Pretty standard fare and pretty unusable except as a place for formal worship. And as such, vacant for most of the hours of the week.
When Emanuel was built, churches were conceived principally as worship space. All other uses and functions were secondary, and the primary function inspired a certain architectural vision. If a church were being founded on the site of Emanuel today, a corner lot in the center of a city, I suspect the conception and construction would be very different. In the first place, there would be flexibility in the worship space, everything moveable and subject to rearrangement in order to serve many purposes, including many different worship purposes. But more importantly, the worship space might well be placed in the context of ministry that expressed the gospel of Christ.
For example, let’s say that housing was needed in the community and specifically housing that addressed needs of a specific population, such as the elderly, or developmentally-disabled people, or people suffering form mental illness. The congregation might choose to build such housing in order to express the love of God and plan space within the housing complex that could be used for worship and other congregational activities. Thus, the worship space would be found in the midst of the housing that was constructed. When this space wasn’t being used for worship and congregational activities, it would be used to meet the needs of the community in which it was situated. This, as I think is plain, would be a very different conception of church than we see reflected in our architecture. Worship would still be central to the life of such a community, but the place of worship would find its home in the very midst of the church’s ministry. The result would be that the walls of the church would become more porous, and the relationship of worship and ministry would become more fluid.
A God worth having is surely a God worth worshiping. In the Christian faith, we have been taught that, “…those who do not love a brother or sister whom them have seen, cannot love God whom they have not seen.” (1 John 4:18) It would seem to follow from this teaching that if our worship is not expressed in love for our neighbors, it is perhaps as empty as a traditional church sanctuary most days and most hours of the week.
Blessings in your quest.
Jeffrey Eaton, Pastor |