Architectural Evangelism

Author and sociologist Ray Oldenburg, in his book, The Great, Good Place, described how people throughout history have lived in three realms, defined by physical and social relationships. The First Place is the environment inhabited by the family unit, whether nuclear or extended (i.e. the home). The Second Place is typically understood as the place where one must go to pay for – or to prepare to pay for – the First Place (i.e. the workplace or school). Throughout human history, individuals have also ha d an additional option, a place to gather. The Third Place.

Perhaps the earliest example of a Third Place in Western history was the Greek agora – basically an outdoor community living room, where people “did life together.”

On one side, merchants would set up shop in the marketplace stalls. Within shouting distance was the birthplace of democracy, free speech, Western philosophy and education, and last, but not least, the temple. This arrangement was not unique to Greek culture. For millennia, communal space was typically anchored by sacred space. From the Roman Forum, Italian piazzas and Spanish plazas to (across the Atlantic) New England Village Greens and Midwestern Town Squares, this “Big Idea” of making room in public places for authentic community went unquestioned.

However, with the rise of Modern culture, architecture, and urban planning, an odd thing happened. After World War II, America not only forgot how to create Third Places, we actually outlawed them. You see, Modern architects and urbanists saw cities as functional machines that needed to be organized by separating the land uses. “Form follows function” became Modernism’s dogma. City planning then “devolved” into the separation and classification of industrial, commercial, recreational, and residential uses.

Land use zones were linked by roads and highways and were largely inaccessible to the pedestrian. The intent was honorable (after all, who wants to live next to a slaughterhouse?), but the outcome has not been quite what was planned: commercial “strips,” homogeneous malls, suburban sprawl, and social isolation.

Machines of Worship
Today, vacant land is rarely designated as a “church zone” because of property tax devaluation and perceived land use conflicts. Churches have to “beg for forgiveness” to exist at hidden locations within industrial parks or in the “boondocks” through a “Conditional Use Permit” process.

This has left modern churches with two basic site plan options:

Place the building closest to the intersection with the backside to the community, and the front door facing the rear parking. (The non-technical term for this is “mooning the community.”)

Set the building back to the rear of the property (strip-mall style) with an “ocean” of parking separating the community and the church.

Modern church architecture is based on the idea that buildings are “machines.” Houses are “machines for living,” and presumably churches are “machines for worship.” Once a church is designed, the modern assumption is that, like a toaster, the design should work just as well in Anchorage, Alaska, as it would in Orlando, Florida.

But how well is the modern church building machine working? According to Barna Research, from 1993 to 2000 the amount of dollars spent on church construction more than doubled, presumably in the name of “expanding the Kingdom.”

Yet during that same seven-year period, the U.S. population increased by eight percent and church attendance decreased by eight percent. A statistician would call that a directly inverse correlation. In Postmodern society, there is an increasing recognition of the pent-up market demand for Third Places. From Starbucks, to Truman Show-styled New Urbanist housing developments, to regional shopping malls that attempt to recreate Main Street USA, the marketplace has tried to respond to our natural hunger for community.

However, the reality is that many of these attempts to provide a neighborhood that emulates Mayberry often leave us feeling hollow. In the sea of an anonymous consumer crowd, we feel welcome only so long as the private commercial owner feels that we are paying customers.

In these private developments masquerading as public spaces, there are often rules of behavior posted which in fact do not allow true free public speech and debate, much less worship.

A New Community
I was convicted of the need for genuine, Christ-centered community during my tenure at the Walt Disney Company, as we drew inspiration for the layout of California’s Downtown from a European village.

With meandering streets that expand and contract, Downtown Disney reaches an experiential climax at a central gathering place. Of course, in any old-world village, the piazza would have been anchored by the church. No matter how lost you ever got wandering through the narrow streets and alleys, you could always look up and see the spire keyed to the heart of the community. As the team of Disney “Imagineers” substituted entertainment and commercial uses for this spiritual anchor, I recognized that we were attempting to f ill the God-shaped hole in our master plan with the same thing that many lost people use to f ill the God-shaped hole in their lives!

Churches across the country are adding coffee bars to replace the old folding table with a box of doughnuts. However, many are missing the point. They are trapped in the modern planning mindset which says that a church facility should be a machine for worship that can accommodate so many cars and attendees for a few hours one day a week and then sit empty of all other uses on the other six days of the week. In other words, “get ‘em in, get ‘em out.” But I believe that the Church has a unique opportunity—and a responsibility— to provide authentic community in the form of relational environments, for horizontal (person-to-person) and vertical (person-to-Creator) connections.

The narrative of the Bible begins with God creating this perfect relational environment in a garden, and ends with Him restoring it in a city. If we define the Postmodern Church as a culturally relevant, Christ-centered community, and if we look back to the Book of Acts and the first century Christian Church, we find that 3,000—and later 5,000—were added in one day in the Third Places of the time !

Visioneering The Future Assembly

Across the country, maverick pastors and emerging leaders are responding to a Nehemiah-like cal ling to rebuild an authentic community centered on God. Rather than simply applying secular planning paradigms and design approaches to the Church, emerging master plans for Postmodern churches are being “visioneered” to include a powerful conceptual overlay (or “Big Idea”) which informs ever y thing from the site plan, the architectural direction, the spaces between the buildings, the graphic tone, and the interior experience.

In Northern California, Dale Borgen, a church planter and pastor, is negotiating with the master developer of a 9,000-acre “New Town” to integrate three megachurch sites into the planned “downtowns” as alternative types of anchor tenants— sharing parking and capitalizing on the cross-f low of people.

Outside of Chicago, Darren Sloniger (a former concert promoter, successful developer, and pastor who holds a masters in urban planning) has opened a “Lightclub” housing Christian concerts on Friday and Saturday nights, church on Sunday, and coffee / community uses the rest of the week.

Nearby, Dave Ferguson and the Institute for Community are practicing social architecture as they covertly integrate church into a masterplanned community center where they run the social recreation programs.

At The Crossing, a Christian church outside of Las Vegas, the journey of God’s people through the wilderness is illustrated with an “architecture of impermanence”: fabric, metal, and desert-toned stucco. Visitors enter underneath a town “gate” with ancient writing noting that “The Journey begins at the Crossing.”

In Beloit, Wisconsin, a town economically ravaged by the effects of the rustbelt, Central Christian Church uses its lobby as the community food bank distribution center and employs architecture in its “Restoration Square” influenced by the look of an industrial plant to proclaim that God is the source of power and light for the community.

In Corona, California, Crossroads Church is developing CandleWalk, where the church auditorium serves as a performing arts center and thousands are drawn onto campus by secular concerts, a restaurant, and the Londen Institute for Evangelism. The church is the anchor tenant, fronted by the “Circle of Light” piazza with pop-jet fountains and a polycarbonate cross-tower / campanile.

This approach, which seeks to tear down the walls and re-connect the Postmodern community to Christ, is what I call “architectural evangelism.” Whereas modern churches focus on getting cars parked, bodies seated, and an effective “product” delivered for a few hours one day a week, architectural evangelism seeks to shape culture through Christ-centered evangelistic environments that are not only safe to seekers, but attract them.

The Samaritan woman at Jacob’s Well would never have made it to the Outer Court or the Inner Court (much less the Holy of Holies), but the God of the Universe came to her and offered her relationship. He did not allow a church building to get in the way. Neither should we.

Mel McGowan is founder and president of Visioneering Studios, America’s leading master planner and architect of “Christ-centered communities.” Mel left a background in alternative music, film, and a decade-long stint at the Walt Disney Company to emerge as one of the youngest leaders of a national architecture firm, with studios in California, Colorado, and Georgia. Learn more at www.visioneeringstudios.com