In defense of worship spaces

Ear­li­er this week I won­dered if it might not be such a bad idea if some of our strug­gling estab­lished meet­ings exper­i­ment­ed with the house church mod­el. An com­menter maps out the dif­fi­cul­ties:

Speak­ing as a “meet­ing planter” (our small Friends meet­ing here was found­ed two years ago by me and one oth­er Friend), I can tell you with­out reser­va­tion that, while we could meet in peo­ple’s homes, it would strict­ly lim­it the abil­i­ty to reach out with our mes­sage and attract oth­ers to par­tic­i­pate. You can pret­ty well be cer­tain that only those who already feel com­fort­able with you will come back to some­one’s home, which may not include the seek­ers who real­ly are look­ing for some­thing they can be part of.

I have seen this with oth­er church­es as well; the local UU fel­low­ship grew from ten to 15 peo­ple in the 5 years that they met in liv­ing rooms; they grew from 30 to 60 in two years when they had their own meetinghouse.

I am try­ing hard to raise the mon­ey to allow us to pur­chase and main­tain an appro­pri­ate build­ing for a meet­ing­house. Until we do, our Meet­ing will con­tin­ue to hide its light under a bushel, despite all our efforts to the con­trary. The desire to have a “home” is deep with­in the human heart, whether it is where we reside or where we worship.

The com­menter was anony­mous (update: no, he’s not, it’s Bruce Arnold of Let­ters from the Street) but I’d love to hear more. I won­der par­tic­u­lar­ly of there’s a zone of dif­fi­cult via­bil­i­ty when the wor­ship com­mu­ni­ty it’s too small to sup­port a build­ing struc­ture and need to pick a bigger-or small­er mod­el for long-term viability.

13 thoughts on “In defense of worship spaces

  1. Ok, I know I’m not nec­es­sar­i­ly sup­posed to com­ment, but I will any­way. Per­haps it’s stat­ing the obvi­ous, but Quak­ers can­not use the ratio­nale that they will be more like­ly to expe­ri­ence growth with a meet­ing­house than with­out one. All we need to do is look at the stats. That sim­ply is not happening.

    In fact, I think Quak­ers would be much more like­ly to expe­ri­ence growth with “house church­es.” Why? In house church­es you meet in a per­son­’s home, which nec­es­sar­i­ly requires some amount of involve­ment in one anoth­er’s lives.

    The bot­tom line is this. Quak­ers need to admit (and many I’ve met do) that they view their meeet­ing­hous­es as spe­cial, even “sacred” places, not the same as just any oth­er place. Hon­est­ly, I think many Quak­ers val­ue their meet­ing­hous­es even more than Catholics do their church­es, which con­tain sacra­men­tals and the Body of Christ.

    Back when the Friends move­ment was just begin­ning, and for quite a while there­after, Quak­ers built sim­ple struc­tures specif­i­cal­ly to avoid hav­ing “church­es,” to avoid the idea of “sacred spaces” because they want­ed to place empha­sis on the pres­ence of God and not on the place itself. They reused wood and used crap­py, rough planks to build their struc­tures and [uncom­fort­able] bench­es. The struc­tures were inten­tion­al­ly unim­pres­sive. The hope was that peo­ple would not become attached to them, but instead would become attached to God. The real­i­ty is that Quak­ers do view their some­times his­toric struc­tures as unique, inter­est­ing, sacred, homey, what­ev­er, and that is why Mic­ah’s metaphor caused so many to be uncom­fort­able. This ten­sion with­in Lib­er­al Quak­erism today is some­thing that needs to be addressed.

    And yes, Lau­ra is sleep­ing and that is why I had time to type this using two hands.

    1. I’m cur­rent­ly read­ing recent issues of Quak­er Reli­gious Thought… which makes sim­i­lar points, though not nec­es­sar­i­ly about build­ings. The points they make are more of the sub­stance of faith, sim­i­lar to what Mar­shall has written. 

      I’ve been a part of some “home meet­ings”… actu­al­ly had one month­ly in my liv­ing room when I lived in Toron­to, to accom­mo­date an elder Friend who had dif­fi­cul­ties tak­ing pub­lic tran­sit to the main meet­ing. Although Friends at the time did­n’t nec­es­sar­i­ly sup­port the house meet­ing (felt it detract­ed from the main meet­ing), wor­ship was what our elder Friend need­ed, and the group who met with her gained much in terms of her shar­ing her expe­ri­ences at the close of worship. 

      I’ve also attend­ed meet­ing in his­toric build­ings when it was lit­er­al­ly “two or three” gath­ered. The ques­tion for me is a viable com­mu­ni­ty of faith, with equal empha­sis on “com­mu­ni­ty” and “faith”. Some of the most cen­tered meet­ings I’ve attend­ed have been with no meet­ing house, no house, but out in the woods or the moun­tains. I fear we often shut our­selves off from the rest of the world… includ­ing the nat­ur­al world. Were we to use our meet­ing­hous­es some­what more spar­ing­ly, we might re-discover right order with­out too much effort… 

      There is a small­er meet­ing in Mont­gomery Coun­ty PA where there is a cen­tral room, used for both wor­ship and fel­low­ship. It was a sim­ple home. I’ve also been in homes that were con­vert­ed from meet­ing­hous­es, where the sense of Pres­ence was palpable. 

  2. Thank you, Mar­tin, for the invi­ta­tion to comment.

    I’d like to start by point­ing out that your anony­mous inter­locu­tor said a bit more than you have reprint­ed here. He also wrote:

    “The argu­ment that we could sell our meet­ing­hous­es and use the funds to help the poor and dis­ad­van­taged makes some sense, unless you think it through all the way. First, there is the fact that hav­ing a meet­ing­house for a ‘home’ for the faith­ful does ful­fill a deep human need. Sec­ond, if we sold every Quak­er struc­ture in North Amer­i­ca, how much would we real­ly have and how much could we do with it? Can we be good stew­ards of what we have been giv­en, and not apply some kind of a means test? Would what we could do with the mon­ey real­ly be that much bet­ter than what we are doing with it now? I’m sure all kinds of anec­dotes could be shared about meet­ing­hous­es with small con­gre­ga­tions that suck up a lot of the avail­able funds, but I’m not inter­est­ed in anec­dotes here. I’m talk­ing about spread­ing the Good News: what would real­ly work better?”

    This, alas, ignores the char­ac­ter of the Good News to which he refers. For the teach­ing about sell­ing what we have, and giv­ing the pro­ceeds to the poor, does not stop there. It con­tin­ues, “…and come, take up the cross and fol­low me.” And what would “tak­ing up the cross and fol­low­ing me” look like? That we have, too, in the same Good News: “Jesus said to him, ‘Fox­es have holes, and birds have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.”

    If we are now a postchris­t­ian club, such mat­ters need not con­cern us. In that case, we might as well get on with the busi­ness of pro­vid­ing every world­ly thing that could pos­si­bly make seek­ers feel at home: not just com­fy meet­ing­hous­es, but day care, rap bands, and voca­tion­al training.

    But if we are Prim­i­tive Chris­tian­i­ty Restored, then the Good News places what we are about at the oppo­site end of the spec­trum from tem­ple con­struc­tion and tem­ple main­te­nance. And it clar­i­fies, too, that the call to sell what we have, and give to the poor, is not giv­en because of the dif­fer­ence it would make in the socioe­co­nom­ic sys­tem, but because of the dif­fer­ence it would make in our own selves. The effect of Zacchæus’s mak­ing resti­tu­tion to his vic­tims was not to elim­i­nate pover­ty in Jeri­cho, but to bring sal­va­tion to his own house.

    Your inter­locu­tor men­tions not hid­ing our light under a bushel. George Fox addressed that prob­lem: he wrote, in a gen­er­al let­ter to Friends, that we who declare God’s eter­nal truth and life must begin by liv­ing it: we must “pos­sess as if we did not … be loose to the world in the Lord’s pow­er; for God’s oil will be a‑top of all vis­i­ble things, which makes his lamps burn, and give light afar off.” In oth­er words, bring­ing the light out from under the bushel involves com­ing out from under our own secu­ri­ty blankets.

    We do indeed have a Good News to preach, a News more entic­ing than any crea­ture com­fort. And as long as we cling to that which we know in our con­sciences is counter to the mes­sage, we can­not preach that News. Our own divid­ed­ness silences us, or pal­pa­bly dis­cred­its us if we try to preach any­way. Our first task, then, I think, must be to take the News ful­ly to heart, and (as Fox said) let go of the world so that we may live it. Once we do that, we may be able to see whether our holy prop­er­ties are still per­mit­ted us.

  3. A cou­ple oth­er rea­sons to have a build­ing. Space for the chil­dren. Acces­si­ble space as we age, or aren’t able to do steps at any age, or manuev­er a walk­er in many bathrooms. 

    We do some­times wor­ship our build­ings and fur­nish­ings, to the point of insist­ing on ancient horse­hair cush­ions no mat­ter what hap­pens to the per­son with asth­ma. If we wor­ship the build­ings we also have a prob­lem spend­ing mon­ey on them. One place (not in my year­ly meet­ing) refused to replace a chil­dren’s table that was com­ing apart and not repairable.

    Down­side of hav­ing a build­ing beside financ­ing is the effort to main­tain­ing it. At the best this becomes a way to include peo­ple. At t he worst a few old­er mem­bers are try­ing to keep up an old building.
    I only know my own experience- a small aging meet­ing that grew because it needed/wanted peo­ple and had a few oth­er things in its favor (loca­tion, a few very ded­i­cat­ed warm heart­ed leaders).

  4. I did­n’t mean to be anony­mous. “Let­ters From the Street” is the name of my blog on Word­Press. I guess as Quak­er blog­gers go, I’m not that famous. 🙂 

    There are some real­ly good com­ments on this thread and I hope over the week­end to be able to respond to them.

    1. Oh it’s you Bruce?! Good, thanks, I’ll update the post with this info. Since you’re active on Quak­erQuak­er (http://​www​.quak​erquak​er​.org/​p​r​o​f​i​l​e​/​D​r​B​r​u​c​e​R​A​r​n​old) and use your name there, I’ve always thought of your blog as Bruce Arnold’s blog and did­n’t rec­og­nize its name. I’d like to hear more about the efforts at meet­ing plant­i­ng and what’s worked and hasn’t.

      1. I wish I had more time for writ­ing. I recent­ly end­ed 15 years of pri­vate prac­tice as a psy­chother­a­pist to take a full-time job (they made me an offer I could­n’t refuse.) Where I used to have can­cel­la­tions and no-shows that gave me time to think and write, now I am busy busy busy. Love the job; it has changed things though.

  5. I final­ly had a chance to get back to this top­ic. I would like to say that in mak­ing my com­ments about how a meet­ing­house is impor­tant to Croatan Friends, I did­n’t mean to say this is true for all Meet­ings every­where. I only hoped to offer a point of view that broad­ens the dia­log on this top­ic. Cer­tain­ly, oth­er Meet­ings than mine may be best served by gath­er­ing in a home or oth­er space. Some Meet­ings are tru­ly oppressed by the upkeep of a build­ing unsuit­able for their cur­rent cir­cum­stances. But let’s not over­look how many Meet­ings are, or could be, well served by an appro­pri­ate facil­i­ty of their own. And, let’s not over­look how often our dis­tinc­tive Quak­er archi­tec­ture has car­ried a mes­sage to vis­i­tors as pro­found as any words that may have been spoken.

    There is more I would like to say on the issue of Young Friends and their impor­tance to our Soci­ety, the orig­i­nal con­text which Mic­ah addressed. I feel the dis­cus­sion has been some­what polar­ized, and that the real­i­ty is nowhere near so clear-cut. I have seen Meet­ings in which it was not age per se, but how long you had been a mem­ber of the Meet­ing that deter­mined how much influ­ence you had (and grow­ing up in it was par­tic­u­lar­ly well-thought-of.) I have seen many Meet­ings which cher­ished and encour­aged their Young Friends — I came of age as a Friend in just such a Meet­ing, and can­not imag­ine my Quak­er jour­ney would have been as rich and deep if that had not been the case. So much more to say on this top­ic and I haven’t ful­ly thought it through. It may require a fuller expo­si­tion on my blog. Again, I’m not offer­ing these few words as the last word, but just try­ing to say that there is room for a much wider view­point than I see so often expressed when this comes up.

  6. Apolo­gies it’s tak­en me a long time to catch up with this. Inter­est­ing. V sym­pa­thet­ic to Julie’s point below, I love your writ­ing and per­spec­tive — shibui 🙂 

    Some of the new­er charis­mat­ic move­ments rent space when they need it, for acces­si­ble loos, chil­dren’s meet­ing rooms and so on — I know one that is just about burst­ing the seams of the club they rent, and anoth­er that meets in a local leisure cen­tre. Night­clubs are often vacant at the times church­es meet. So I don’t think we need meet­ing hous­es with dis­tinc­tive archi­tec­ture to pro­vide for those needs, nor for meet­ing out­side some­one’s home. ETA: Oh — I am guess­ing this is what you meant about fire halls in the post before this one. I should fol­low con­ver­sa­tions in date order instead of read­ing backwards.

    Also love what Mar­shall Massey is say­ing below, thanks for writ­ing that!

    I am mulling over some­thing about tak­ing the meet­ing house into my life, instead. The spare plain archi­tec­ture is an exam­ple I can con­tem­plate, as my own life under­goes changes in my attempts to fol­low Jesus. There is an aes­thet­ic which is start­ing to make an impres­sion on me — I think if I ever get dec­o­rat­ing and build­ing skills, my space might start to look “meeting-house-ish”. I’m a slow learn­er in sev­er­al ways, and I am nowhere near there yet, but I can feel a pull. The archi­tec­ture is anoth­er exam­ple of those trea­sures of the Quak­er her­itage that we can mine as we search for ways to be real­ly faith­ful in the now.

  7. I absolute­ly agree with you. I used to belong to a meet­ing house that met in peo­ple’s home in the win­ter since the meet­ing house does not have elec­tric­i­ty or run­ning water. As a result, the meet­ing has grown very, very lit­tle in the last 100 years. Peo­ple will come in the months that we meet at the meet­ing house but will not go when we meet in oth­ers home. When you meet in a per­son­’s home there are issues of clean­li­ness, aller­gies, etc. The meet­ing house is a neu­tral place where every­one feels welcome. 

  8. Fas­ci­nat­ing con­ver­sa­tion. I am a great admir­er or the Church of the Sav­ior in Wash­ing­ton, DC, that has eschewed wor­ship spaces in favor of a deep com­mit­ment to social jus­tice — feed­ing the hun­gry, hous­ing the poor, etc. That said, at my meet­ing we own one of those his­toric meet­ing­hous­es that requires main­te­nance ($47,000 com­mit­ted for this year and next) and which we all love. Our com­mu­ni­ty is warm and active and grow­ing, although the growth is the result of our out­reach and nur­ture efforts rather than the extreme­ly scenic venue — and we’ve cer­tain­ly had years when we have lost mem­bers and atten­ders, in spite of our meet­ing­house. When we are not using the meet­ing­house, it serves as a week­ly venue for AA, and peri­od­i­cal­ly for meet­ings by local com­mu­ni­ty groups. We have per­mit­ted folks to use our lawn for yard sales to raise mon­ey for good caus­es. We hold din­ners there for His­pan­ic guest work­ers from a local land­scap­ing busi­ness. Between First Days, we allow the local folks to park their vehi­cles in our park­ing lot. We also have a one-room school­house and until very recent­ly oper­at­ed a pro­gram where local schools sent 4th graders to expe­ri­ence what it was like to be a Quak­er child in 1818. Although the vil­lage, where our meet­ing is locat­ed, was a Quak­er com­mu­ni­ty for many years, it no longer is, but our prop­er­ty is still very much part of the com­mu­ni­ty and is val­ued even by those who nev­er attend Meet­ing for Worship. 

    Recent­ly, my hus­band and I were called upon to res­cue the Arch­bish­op of Cape Town (head of the Angli­can church in South­ern Africa and the suc­ces­sor to Arch­bish­op Tutu’s seat) from a long lay over at Dulles Air­port which is not too far from my meet­ing. We took him out to lunch at a local restau­rant and then, since we had a lit­tle time to spare, we took him to the meet­ing­house. When we entered, the sense of the many gen­er­a­tions of good Quak­er folk who had wor­shiped there was pal­pa­ble and a hush descend­ed upon us. Quite spon­ta­neous­ly we sat down and entered the silence for what I can only describe as a brief Meet­ing for Wor­ship. The pres­ence of the Spir­it flowed through us and over us. It was an extra­or­di­nary expe­ri­ence and it would not have hap­pened but for the oppor­tu­ni­ty afford­ed by the exis­tence of the meet­ing­house. My point is not that we need­ed the meet­ing­house to pray togeth­er, but that God used this oppor­tu­ni­ty to bless us.

    Per­haps, rather than view­ing the issue of our meet­ing­hous­es as an either/or propo­si­tion, we should look upon them more in terms of both/and. If we use those spaces well, as part of our Quak­er wit­ness to the wider world, they can ampli­fy our min­istry. No meet­ing­house, no mat­ter how his­toric or beau­ti­ful, can take the place of a wor­ship com­mu­ni­ty, filled with the Spir­it and going about God’s work. We have ample evi­dence of that. And even if we sold these spaces and “gave the mon­ey to the poor,” there is no guar­an­tee that that is, in and of itself, God’s work. (Any­one who has had any­thing to do with for­eign aid can attest to that!) Our meet­ing­hous­es are not sacred or holy, but assets to be put to God’s ser­vice. If we are faith­ful and fol­low the lead­ings of the Spir­it, we will “come down where we ought to be.”

    1. Hi Patri­cia,
      I don’t mean this in an offen­sive way, tru­ly I don’t. But what in the world does 47K get used for? I mean, that would be a hefty down­pay­ment on a house (or even a church)! There are no tax­es, so all you’ve got is heat, air, elec­tric­i­ty, water/sewer, lawn maintenance/landscaping (which at my church is done by parish­ioners), and clean­ing prod­ucts. I can­not in my wildest dreams imag­ine why any meet­ing­house should cost that much to main­tain unless there’s a major improvement/repair planned. Also, I’ve nev­er been to a meet­ing that had more than around 60 – 70 peo­ple in atten­dance. Doing the math, that’s quite a lot per per­son. Just curious.
      Julie

  9. Inter­est­ing com­ments. The one about prayer though. Are we so unac­cus­tomed to prayer and wor­ship that we have to go to a spe­cial place to do it? I notice when I hang around with charis­mat­ics we are like­ly to have impromp­tu bible study and prayer when we meet up for cof­fee of chat because a lot of peo­ple I’ve met in that tra­di­tion make it their inten­tion to find the spaces to do that. They are look­ing to con­nect with the cen­tre of life in God and mak­ing the oppor­tu­ni­ties to do it.

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