Quick Takes: Beauty Matters

Don't be surprised if your church's airplane hanger facility is a turn off to the unchurched.

Here's an article that points to the importance of the beauty of Gothic church architecture.

This caught my attention because I happened to sit on the back row of my church on Sunday, and spent part of the service enjoying the architecture of the room. The window to the right is in the chancel.

As I sat there, I realized just how beautiful this room is, and how it contributes to an atmosphere of worship.

My freshman year in college, I took an art course on Cathedrals and Castles of Europe. It was a great way to begin my academic career as it broaden my awareness of what was out there.

The cathedral that I was most taken with was Amiens in northern France, not too far from Paris. Here is a picture of the nave from above. What we learned in class was that in medieval Europe, prior to the advent of the movable type press, 500 years before Luther's revolution, the cathedral was part of the vernacular of the Gospel.  It was part of the message. It said something about who God is. To an illiterate peasant, Amiens and other cathedrals like it would say, God is great and up there. You are small, down here, and yet connected to Him.  It was a way to connect the smallness of the individual to the greatness of God.

Today, church architecture has a different motivation. It is not about the qualitative difference between God and man. It is about the reverse. God is accessible whenever you want him. You can carry him around in your hip pocket if you want. He is our spiritual concierge.

One of the other ideas that the medieval worshipper was to gather from this treatment of a worship space was light. Look as this next picture from Amiens. This view is looking toward what is called the choir.  The way these cathedrals were designed was on a cruciform axis with a nave and a set of transcepts. The pulpit, seen here in this picture, is at this intersection, where also the altar would be. The congregation would sit or stand between the front door and here. In many of these cathedrals, there would be a chapel in the back, in Amiens case, where you see the light coming through the windows. And there would be a large, ornate metal screen which you can also see in this picture.  The large windows, up high on the clerestory would let light in from above. So the architecture sends the message that the light of God comes from above.

Today, we've lost most of that sense of connection because the classical motif has been replaced by the entertainment complex motif. Fortunately, my church is counter-cultural in this regard. It is a simple tall-steeple Gothic church built in the 1880's. It's classical form transcends the vagaries of American popular culture. As our worship form has become more eclectic, not less traditional, but more globally traditional, the space has actually become more important as the setting for worship. 

As I sat on the last row underneath the balcony overhang, it was a cloudy day. About half way through the service the sun came out and burst through the stained glass window you see here. The camera in phone doesn't capture the three-dimensional nature of this window. I sat there looking at the beauty of this window captured by not only the beauty of God, but also the depth of that beauty.

Beauty matters because it is representative of God's goodness in the world.  Whether it is a medieval cathedral drawing our attention upward to see God as the all encompassing great being that he is, or in a modern church where the beauty of a simple window points us to the beauty and wisdom of God's love in creation, we meet God here, in this place. The question is who is the God we meet.  And what do people who walk in our church's think we think about who God is?