In fact, I believe that such things are a distraction. This is the heart of our worship service, and it does not require stained glass, or flying buttresses, or massive pipe organs. We will partake of the bread to remember Christ’s broken body, and of the cup to remember Christ’s shed blood. And we do so to remember what it cost to restore us to a right relationship with God. We do so to honor God for sending His son into this world and to honor Jesus for loving us enough to play the part of the perfect sacrifice to redeem us from our sins. We do so because Jesus, in the Upper Room, told us to do so. Right now, we are all sitting down together to share the Lord’s Supper. And I do not need a gaudy building and religious trappings to somehow put me in a proper frame of mind for worship. I believe that God is far less concerned about the building we meet in together than He is about what we do when we meet together. I want our building to be comfortable and provide us the space and resources we need, but really I want nothing more from it. The building is just a platform a place for the saints to come together and worship God. I believe it would be a waste of resources and would cause us to focus too much on what I see as unimportant.Ĭhurch is not the building. Ultimately, even if we had the resources, I would never use them today to build a grand cathedral. I see a similar trend playing out in America, although it is less advanced, and it saddens me. I see them as symbols of a Christian heritage that, unfortunately, most Europeans have largely left behind. They are more museums now than centers of worship. I can only imagine the reaction of Medieval clerics to five-year-olds running around in high spirits inside a cathedral.īut mostly I am troubled because these grand structures are, today, largely devoid of actual parishioners. It makes me happy when I see little children, after the service, running over the stage laughing and playing. To me, church is about the people, not the building. Moreover, I find these buildings foreboding and sterile. ![]() In the end, I conclude that surely the resources required to create these gaudy structures could have been better employed elsewhere. Think of it as Medieval virtue-signaling on a colossal scale. I sometimes feel that cathedral building was too often about competition between communities to create the most beautiful edifice and to demonstrate the piety, power and importance of the cathedral’s sponsors by the opulence of the building created. From my modern perspective, I have this sense that our Christian forefathers placed too much emphasis on the brick and mortar and the trappings of religion, and not enough emphasis on love and service and the training of the saints. In short, the many cathedrals I have seen across Europe do indeed inspire me.īut on the other hand, these structures make me a bit uneasy. They were fundamental to the life of their communities and the focal point of public life. And I believe that the communities and the laborers/artisans that constructed them viewed their contributions to the cathedrals and their work as acts of piety something that measured the best of their resolve and energies and abilities and focused them on what they saw as a godly purpose.įinally, as a student of history and culture, I see these buildings as lasting monuments to our Christian heritage and important centers of learning and culture. Moreover, I cannot help but marvel at the labor and resources that must have been required for their construction. These edifices seem to compel a sense of reverence and introspection. On the one hand, I am awed by the beauty of their architecture and their intricate carvings, statues, stained glass, and artwork, and their massive pipe organs. Whenever I see buildings like this, I have mixed feelings. While we were there, we visited a number of cathedrals. ![]() ![]() Lou Ann and I just returned from a trip to Germany.
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