Temple Raising

In a TV interview historian Michael Wood reflects upon the world’s great historic civilizations and observes that their impressive building programs were implemented in the dying days of their influence. The places modern tourists visit were in fact the last gasps of inflated kingdoms suffering an incurable wound. I doubt the Aztecs designed their temples as the perfect image for twenty-first century tourist brochures. At the height of power they were unsuspectingly raising their own tombstones.
You have probably seen great European cathedrals like St.Paul’s in London or St. Vitius’ in Prague. Though awesome in grandeur the eerie lament of an abandoned faith echoes mournfully midst the ancient pillars. That same dirge is haunting rural and urban Canada where buildings once full sit empty, with the occasional well-intentioned few searching for ways to “save the church” – a thought rich with tragic irony. Our building-centeredness has served as blinder, blunder and burden.
And still the Canadian Church, never more in decline, has entered a new era of temple raising. Will we never learn? Why are we so determined to sink obscene amounts of God’s money into temples he does not inhabit? Why have we assumed this is the only God-inspired model we must follow into eternity? Is it not clear by now that this is a human religious enterprise and not necessarily the heartbeat of our Father? Who are we building these big box monuments for? And, will our children or grandchildren when they bear grey hair care two pence about keeping these new basilicas up to code in a new economic and environmental reality, amidst a culture that will be – actually already is – avowedly secular and indifferent to our steeples and welcoming foyers?
Our culture is headed away from Christian faith at breakneck speed so why do we think wads spent on ourselves will spark some great revival? It won’t. In fact, such decadence may in fact feed and speed the exodus. The issue, really, is not the buildings themselves – they had their use and may yet still, though I hope in a radically different way – but the entrenched Christendom idea of the church that yet binds us. Far too much “church-life” is spent trying to coax people into our hallowed halls. Church buildings have ceased being remotely meaningful to the life of most communities. This is no great loss, for the Church is the body of Christ and her people God’s building. If we wake up we may yet live justly, mercifully, and humbly the radical hopeful kingdom God’s people can build for a society both justifiably critical of our self-centeredness and aching to see what they subconsciously dream we’re capable of.
Can we honestly not read the signs of the times and deduce that our current blueprint is nothing more than the temple raising of a fading empire and that God’s Kingdom does not depend – indeed never has – on church buildings? Is it really a feather in our cap when a non-believer compliments us on our nice church? Isn’t this merely a sign that they have yet to encounter the Church at all? A new imagination is desperately needed that will risk thinking, listening, and conversing with the body of Christ international that has no choice but to live in true fellowship, plant seeds and engage their troubled contexts rather than raise temples. This is no longer a “build it and they will come” world – if it ever really was. If we don’t learn this soon we are primed to join others who built big just before becoming historical curiosities.