Aiming for “Resourceful Excellence” in Our Renovations

We’re nearing the end of a several-month building project, focused mainly on renovating our kids’ space. (See the picture above for a glimpse. If you haven’t seen it in person, I can assure you, your kids will love it.)

From time to time we get questions about our “philosophy of buildings,” i.e. when and how we decide to spend money on certain projects. So let me use this opportunity to explain it.

We try to balance two values as we approach the building of our facilities: The first is that God dwells in temples not made with hands, and he never called us to build buildings as a church growth strategy. He called us to reach people. The beauty of the church is not in its architecture; it’s in the beautiful stories of redemption that are told as people are reached for Jesus. It’s no accident that you won’t find a single building project in the New Testament.

The second truth, however, is that a certain level of excellence that both (a) glorifies God and (b) helps us win people. Regarding (a), God is not a strictly utilitarian God. You can see that in the way he created the world, filled with gratuitous beauty. There isn’t anything inherently wrong with beauty, nor is there a theological reason why we should avoid making what we create pleasing to the senses.

Andy Stanley makes this point well in his book Deep and Wide:

It could be argued that the very first thing God did in time was to create an appealing environment tailored for his prize creation, that portion of creation that would be fashioned in his image, the image of the one who created an irresistible environment. Essentially, that’s the story of creation. . . . In the beginning, the earth was like an unpainted, poorly lit room with all the furniture in boxes in the hallway waiting to be assembled and properly arranged. So God started arranging the furniture. ‘And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. God saw that the light was good’ (Genesis 1:3-4). God started improving things. Light was better than darkness. He didn’t put Adam and Eve in a formless, empty, chaotic darkroom. He created an appealing environment and then placed them in it… It’s interesting to think about. God was the original interior designer.

The environment we create, you see, communicates something to people about us, our message, and our God. Our buildings are a kind of art. The question isn’t whether our buildings are a type of art. They are. The question is whether they will be beautiful art or ugly art. We always say we want to bless our community. Should that not include our visual presence in it as well? Saying we want “to bless you” with our mouths while our presence is a burden to the eyes, can, in a very subtle way, undermine the message.

Furthermore, our buildings can have a significant impact on our ability to minister effectively. The shape and flow of buildings can help foster community (or inhibit it), help catalyze spiritual feelings (or diminish them), make people feel safe (or not), and help us communicate the message clearly (or make it hard to hear). Buildings facilitate ministry—hence the name “facilities.”

When you are new, you notice things about your environment. You notice the stained carpet and the dingy looking wall, and you form an impression about the people who own that building and how seriously they take their agenda. After you’ve been around something for a while, you quit noticing that stuff because you get used to it. We need constantly to see our facilities through a guests eyes. We want to communicate that we are very serious about blessing the world with the love of the gospel.

Wisdom in this area, as with most areas of ministry, is found in balancing those two values–that God’s church does not consist of buildings made of bricks, and that good facilities both glorify God and help us reach people. We must live in the tension between them.

At the end of the day, we don’t want to build a monument, we want to facilitate a movement. But movements are facilitated, in part, by buildings. So we will build what is necessary to facilitate the movement.

We encapsulate that in the words: “resourceful excellence.” We want to honor God by giving him our best, while keeping in mind that everything we do should be focused on mission. The buildings aren’t the end game. They are tools. But to be effective, tools need to be sharp. And every now and then our tools need sharpening. We don’t always get the balance right, but that is what we are going for.