by Sid Batts
On the Sunday before Christmas, our congregation re-entered our sanctuary after a 20-month hiatus and a $15 million renovation. It was worth it! Here’s why.
Members signed blessings to the future on the steel beams used in the new welcome center.
First Presbyterian is a 2,900 member congregation on the edge of downtown Greensboro, N.C., a city of 275,000. We are a tape-measured home run from a new minor league baseball park and just a few blocks from a new performing arts center that is currently under construction. Downtown is experiencing a decade-long renaissance. Add in the Atlantic Coast Conference home office, the Greensboro Coliseum, a new aquatic center, and six college campuses … and somehow this city has survived the collapse or relocation of such iconic companies as Burlington Industries and Jefferson-Pilot and the loss of economic engines from textiles and furniture. And then came the great recession!
But it was worth it.
We live in a church culture that has traded place for space. The latest generation of large sanctuaries built in the U.S. is mostly warehouses or large seat arenas, “worship centers” that resemble modern theaters or auditoriums for the performing arts. Generally, the technology in those places is out-of-this-world sophisticated and effective. These spaces are impressive, functional and pragmatic. But in the eye of this beholder, they are not beautiful nor do they evoke a sense of God’s awe, majesty, mystery, transcendence or presence. I’d say that’s important for the worship of God.
“Thin places,” from Celtic spirituality, refers to places “where the boundary between heaven and earth is especially thin … where we can sense the divine more readily.” From that notion I’d say there are physical places where people can more readily experience the presence of God. We inherited some sense of this “theology of place” from our Jewish ancestors (i.e., the land and the Temple).
A craftsman with crenshaw lighting in Floyd, Virginia, restores and upgrades a chandelier.
We are lucky — or blessed — at First Presbyterian because our forefathers and foremothers of the 1920s had the crazy idea of hiring a noted Manhattan architect to build a Gothic cathedral in a small southern city of 25,000. Hobart Upjohn got inspiration from the 13th century cathedral in Albi, France, a fortress-like edifice that is one of the largest brick structures in the world. It took two centuries to build it! What Upjohn designed was a Greensboro cathedral where the exterior reminds one of “A Mighty Fortress” while the interior is a statement of beauty, combining symbols, art, wood carvings, stained glass, hand-painted stencils and ornate lanterns under a 90-foot ceiling. Oh, did I tell you we found asbestos in the ceiling?
But it was worth it! Perhaps to believe it was worth it, you’d also have to believe that “thin places” have a role in worship, in experiencing God’s presence and in spiritual transformation. And, you’d find yourself resonating with the thoughts of archbishop Justin Rigali on sacred architecture: “Beauty is the center of gravity of all the liturgical sciences. Beauty changes us. It disposes us to the transforming action of God … . ”
Then he quotes Benedict XVI (I was surprised!) “Authentic beauty … unlocks the yearning of the human heart, the profound desire to know, to love, to go towards the Other, to reach for the Beyond. If we acknowledge that beauty touches us intimately … that it opens our eyes, then we rediscover the joy of seeing, of being able to grasp the profound meaning of our existence, the Mystery of which we are part.”
If you could hear the people in this congregation talk about this place, hear the tone in which they speak of the weddings, the baptisms, the funerals, the midnight Christmas Eve candlelight service, the processing bagpipers, the organ’s deep tremor on Good Friday or the soaring Hallelujah chorus on Easter, you’d be convinced that this sanctuary meets the criteria of a “thin place.”
Was the renovation primarily a preservation project? Far from it. We are much more concerned with our future than our past. We sought a renovation that brings us into the 21st century. As a result, our renovation included replacing all of the original 1920s wiring, plumbing and heating unit; upgrading lighting, audio, video and sound — including a hearing loop in the sanctuary floor; and adding unobtrusive flat-screen monitors on the rear columns.
In addition to the sanctuary, we renovated the adjacent Smith Building, also built in 1929. This created a welcome center that includes a café-solarium-bookstore-coffee shop, offered a new user-friendly front entrance, and moved church staff offices into the Smith Building vortex to facilitate informal communication, connection and synergy. This renovation has an eye for the future, creating a place to welcome a new generation of community-seeking, tech-savvy millennials and Gen X/Yers trying to find spiritual footing.
But is this renovation “missional”? In addition to the church’s mission of worship, education, spiritual formation, congregational care, evangelism and being community, on our campus we feed 150 homeless guests two nights a week, sponsor the Step-Up job/life training ministry, lease affordable space to Habitat for Humanity, house Faith Action (a community ministry for new immigrants), educate hundreds of children in two preschools, host a senior community program, run a jobs ministry for unemployed or underemployed professionals, and are involved in a dozen other “missional” ministries. Don’t you think it’s hard to segregate buildings from what is missional?
Twenty months is a long time, unless you consider the 200 years it took to build our inspiring French sister. But the 20 months taught us the meaning of flexibility … and friendship with neighbors. While our nontraditional worship service remained in our Life Center, our traditional services moved across the corner to the smaller sanctuary of our long-time Jewish friends, Temple Emanuel. We held Christmas Eve services in the larger and splendid chapel of the Episcopal Canterbury School, held larger funerals in the spacious sanctuary of First Baptist Church, and we had something akin to opening day: an Easter service at the Greensboro Grasshoppers minor league ballpark, where I preached “The Sermon on the Mound.”
It was worth it.
SID BATTS has been the senior pastor at First Presbyterian, Greensboro, since 2001.
A moving narrative on the need for constant awareness of the transcendence and mystery of our God! How sad that so many congregations today, by their very architecture, to say nothing of their often noisy, ME-focused and entertainment-venue-style worship, easily forget this. The “high church” error is to regard YHWH as so remote that one can only approach Her/Him through intercessory priesthood, elaborate ritual, and sacrificial ceremony. But the “low church” error is, “God’s my pal! My Errand-Boy/Girl, whom I can order about by quoting selectively Bible verses” (often out of context). Doesn’t the truth lie somewhere in between these two extremes? How mistaken it is for congregations to assume that most Millennials can be seduced back into the pews/theater seats simply by constructing what are essentially concert halls, with raucous music and slang-filled liturgical words more fitting for rock concerts than for the worship of Adonai! Edifices for worship such as First Presbyterian, Greensboro, remind us by their very beauty and soaring majesty that we always need to remember that “The Lord is in the holy temple; let all the earth keep silence before God.” How many/few Presbyterians really appreciate Calvin’s conviction that in the Eucharist, which was always the early Church’s central act of worship, we believers, by faith, and by God’s sheer grace in Christ, are mystically taken up into heaven, in the Lord’s very presence? Dwyn Mounger
I am troubled by two recent articles highlighting church building investments in the tens of millions of dollars. Both articles, I thought, were attempts to justify large expenditures of money for the sake of beautiful worship spaces that “set the mood” for encountering God. I feel, as a Gen X pastor with many years of service to the church before me (God willing), that both articles were exercises in tone-deafness. This observation is not meant as a slight to the generosity or dedication of the congregations, and I certainly do not wish to come off as the purveyor of ecclesial humbug, but why are we doing this?
In both cases, aesthetic beauty seems to be the primary justification. One of the articles went as far as dismissing the “vanilla” façade of modern churches. Besides the condescending nature of this observation, those making the argument seem to have missed a major theological point: whose purposes are we serving, God’s or our own? I think the historic witness of the church (Augustine, for example) is that things, whether buildings, persons or ideas, are gifts of the Most High, gifts that are to be used and enjoyed only to the degree that they glorify God (soli Deo gloria!). I’m sure that God does not need the assistance of Italian marble or 13th century cathedrals to accomplish this task.
Here’s another question: While God can use beauty, through such ostentatious displays of wealth, does the church potentially endanger its ability to proclaim Christ and him crucified for beauty’s sake? I am sure that the opulence of those church buildings is not lost on the homeless who come to the soup kitchen. As they fill their bowls, or as the working poor flock to classes on job and life skills, maybe they are learning the unspoken lesson that their poverty comes from being from the wrong side of the tracks where churches like this don’t get built. The question is not whether you can segregate buildings from being missional, but whether such buildings are necessary or even helpful in service to a Lord who came to us “in the form of God, [not regarding] equality with God as something to be exploited, but [emptying] himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness.” (Philippians 2:6-7)
On a final theological note, I would also argue that beautiful buildings (or beauty in general) are not the “thin spaces” where we encounter God. The “thin spaces” are the places and situations where the Spirit is at work in the world, carrying Good News to the broken and forgotten. The thin places aren’t places at all, but a way of being, a state of solidarity (both spiritual and material) with the least among us. (Matthew 25:40) In fact, suggesting any necessity for buildings in encountering the Lord God seems, to my ears, strangely out of tune. (Acts 7:48)
Samuel Weddington
Maywood, N.J.
How sad that this whole conversation is taking place in so-called “Post-Christian” America and the northern hemisphere! Inheritors of a magnificent building, filled with rich symbolism and erected to the glory of God but greatly in need of repair, the faithful members of First Presbyterian, Greensboro, had no alternative but to renovate that structure for God’s worship by future generations and for witness to a fallen world.
One recalls the terrible time of 17th-century England’s Commonwealth, under so-named “Lord Protector”/dictator Oliver Cromwell, to whom even “old presbyter” [was] but “new priest writ large.” The nation was seemingly in its worst of times. Not only were Anglicans being persecuted and thrown from their parishes, but Parliament and Church alike had even been purged of its numerous Presbyterians, who themselves had been horrified by the regicide. And yet, at that time, in Leicestershire a glorious, neogothic church building was being erected beside a rural lake– and paid for by a nobleman: the Chapel of the Holy Trinity. South African novelist, devout Christian, and bold warrior against apartheid Alan Paton once stood before its entrance and read this plaque over the door: “In the yeare 1653: when all things sacred were throughout ye nation Either demollisht or profaned Sir Robert Shirley Barronet founded this Church whose singular praise it is to have done ye best things in ye worst times And hoped them in the most callamitous” [sic].
Bold social witness, feeding and clothing and sheltering the hungry and poor, are by no means antithetic to proclaiming the great news of Jesus Christ through art and architecture at their best!
One recalls the little girl who, with her mother, passed on the street one day a member of their church who, laden with baskets of food, was taking them to poor people in their town. “There goes a real saint!” said the mother. Later they entered a church with a magnificent, stained-glass window, depicting an apostle, through which the noonday sun shown in brilliance.” “Oh! What is it, Mother?” cried the little girl. “It’s a saint!” answered the mother, breathless herself before its beauty.
At first this puzzled the girl. How can a “saint’ be both a person who feeds the hungry and also a figure in stained glass?” Then it dawned on her: “A saint is someone or something that lets Christ’s light shine through!”
Thank God that First Church, Greensboro, beams that light in both ways!
Dwyn Mounger
Mea culpa! “NEW presbyter is but OLD writ large” (Puritan Independent John Milton, in his “On the new forcers of Conscience under the Long Parliament”).
Dwyn Mounger