As GCPC is preparing to move into a new building for worship (and Sunday school, but that’s another discussion), the facility itself has raised questions of architecture and furniture and décor. In the past, this building has been both a dance studio and a music recording studio (the Alabama Shakes, no less). And to look at it from the outside, I mean, it’s a metal box; it doesn’t exactly “look” like a church.

However, as Andrew Fuller, the English Baptist pastor of the late 18th and early 19th centuries, reminds us, we don’t “go to church” so much as the “church gathers for worship.”

Since the church is people (as we will see, Lord willing, from 1 Peter 2 this coming Sunday), the place we meet isn’t what matters so much as why we meet. We meet to worship the one true God. 

But what do we believe about Him? Just whom do we worship? Both our architecture and our worship service should communicate what we believe about the God we worship and serve.

God is completely other. He lives outside of time and space, not limited by a physical body the way we are. He’s infinite, eternal, and unchangeable.[1] God alone is “holy, holy, holy” as Isaiah tells us from his heavenly vision in Isaiah 6. And we need to communicate God’s transcendence in our worship.

But he’s also accessible. God has come to us in the person of the Son, Jesus Christ. He has come to us in language we can read and understand in the written word. God invites us into his presence through the blood of Christ. He welcomes us as his children. And just as we seek to communicate God’s transcendence in worship, we also seek to communicate his immanence, his nearness, his approachability.

This is where worship and architecture meet. When you meet in a 17th century cathedral with solid stone walls and a 50-foot ceiling and your eyes are drawn upward as you enter, the transcendence of God is made plainly evident to all. Because of the architecture, communicating God’s immanence will take some thoughtful work.

That’s not our situation in this new building. We have the reverse scenario – a metal building with 10-foot ceilings on a relatively small footprint of land. God’s immanence is clear. Balancing that nearness with the transcendence of God takes thoughtful work. That’s part of the reason our liturgy[2] is the way it is – traditional with familiar structure and elements so that it feels more historic and reinforces God’s transcendence.

But this balance is also affecting some of the decisions being made in our new building – paint color and furniture and lighting and such. We want the space we meet in to help us communicate theological truths proclaimed in worship – that God is absolutely transcendent and over all, but he’s absolutely immanent, near to all who call on him.

[1] Question 4 of the Westminster Shorter Catechism

[2] Order of worship