Skye Jethani on Consumerism & Church Design

Jun 22nd, 2009 | By Skye Jethani | Category: Church, Culture, Movies

2 comments
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  1. Hillary June 23rd, 2009 7:23 am :

    The church that I’m a part of has all of those spaces — the third space (cafe and bookstore), the entertaining kids’ area, and the theater space. We’re running three conferences at our church this week, hosting thousands of people from all over the country. In the opening talk last night, our pastor implored conference attendees not to be envious or otherwise distracted by the building. He said something like, “You might think this space is great, but I’ll tell you…it’s a burden. When I took this job, I inherited 25 million dollars of debt for this building.” As if to say, be happy with your smaller, more modest space and the ministry you can do in it. Not only can the consumer-driven space be distracting, it can be a ridiculous financial burden on the church.

    Our expensive building enables a lot of the ministry we do, but it’s also a source of frustration in many ways.

  2. Mike Batley June 30th, 2009 9:09 am :

    Skye certainly raises some interesting questions but what would he have us to do? This feels more like critical conversation that never seems to end of who is the church for? If it is primarily for the saved then the “message” the building should be sending can be about sacrifice and austerity in a world that is passing away. But if the church and its aesthetics are about attractional/missional values then we need to be like those venues lost people are comfortable with. Skye’s comments don’t address this bigger issue.

    I also take issue with his “medium is the message” comment. While the medium does carry a message who says it is as loud, articulate and consistent as other messages in the church? Preaching, content in songs, teaching, published values, service, interpersonal interaction, these are much louder, clearer, and more personal messages that a church communicates and hopefully contextualizes any messages aesthetics does.

    Finally, we need to remember that beauty, order, and creativity can be a rich apologetic and therefore aroma to the gospel message and our facilities–rightly done–can have that added value. Have you ever been in a cathedral? Does that space not move you? That’s all I’m saying.

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