Church-going, Philip Larkin, 1954

Once I am sure there's nothing going on
I step inside, letting the door thud shut.
Another church: matting, seats, and stone,
And little books; sprawlings of flowers, cut
For Sunday, brownish now; some brass and stuff
Up at the holy end; the small neat organ;
And a tense, musty, unignorable silence,
Brewed God knows how long. Hatless, I take off
My cycle-clips in awkward reverence.

Move forward, run my hand around the font.
From where I stand, the roof looks almost new -
Cleaned, or restored? Someone would know: I don't.
Mounting the lectern, I peruse a few
Hectoring large-scale verses, and pronounce
'Here endeth' much more loudly than I'd meant.
The echoes snigger briefly. Back at the door
I sign the book, donate an Irish sixpence,
Reflect the place was not worth stopping for.

Yet stop I did: in fact I often do,
And always end much at a loss like this,
Wondering what to look for; wondering, too,
When churches will fall completely out of use
What we shall turn them into, if we shall keep
A few cathedrals chronically on show,
Their parchment, plate and pyx in locked cases,
And let the rest rent-free to rain and sheep.
Shall we avoid them as unlucky places?

Or, after dark, will dubious women come
To make their children touch a particular stone;
Pick simples for a cancer; or on some
Advised night see walking a dead one?
Power of some sort will go on
In games, in riddles, seemingly at random;
But superstition, like belief, must die,
And what remains when disbelief has gone?
Grass, weedy pavement, brambles, buttress, sky,

A shape less recognisable each week,
A purpose more obscure. I wonder who
Will be the last, the very last, to seek
This place for what it was; one of the crew
That tap and jot and know what rood-lofts were?
Some ruin-bibber, randy for antique,
Or Christmas-addict, counting on a whiff
Of gown-and-bands and organ-pipes and myrrh?
Or will he be my representative,

Bored, uninformed, knowing the ghostly silt
Dispersed, yet tending to this cross of ground
Through suburb scrub because it held unspilt
So long and equably what since is found
Only in separation - marriage, and birth,
And death, and thoughts of these - for which was built
This special shell? For, though I've no idea
What this accoutred frowsty barn is worth,
It pleases me to stand in silence here;

A serious house on serious earth it is,
In whose blent air all our compulsions meet,
Are recognized, and robed as destinies.
And that much never can be obsolete,
Since someone will forever be surprising
A hunger in himself to be more serious,
And gravitating with it to this ground,
Which, he once heard, was proper to grow wise in,
If only that so many dead lie round.

From the Mailbag, Part I

I've gotten some interesting comments and queries from readers, which I'll be sharing over the next weeks in case they are helpful to someone else as well.   The first was from a small-town Kansas pastor with an expanding congregation, just beginning to think about a new building, and seeking advice on how to make the design match their purpose and goals.  Here's my response:

I'm glad you're thinking about this, because churches are neglecting the potential of church design as an outreach tool. Churches have come to think alot about their screens, but comparatively little about their spaces.

One comparison I made with my own church was to ask them how great they thought it would be if they designed a website that got 18,000 hits a day. They'd be over the moon! But that's how many people a day drive past our new building site. So it's critically important that the building be a constant, speaking reminder of who we are. Way MORE important than a website, actually.

I'd suggest that you start by defining some words that reflect your values. The word definitions are great done at a leadership level, because they are central to the vision of the building. For us it was "light and truth" from Psalms 43:3. Then think about how those words might be 'distilled' into something abstract. For example, most people might try to symbolize light and truth by drawing a picture of a sun and a picture of a Bible. Too literal. Turning light and truth into a building, for us, meant lots of transparent glass, delicate construction members, and authentic materials that didn't pretend to be something else.

That's a key concept for any church I think. It's become popular to talk about authenticity, yet our buildings are anything but. And more modern churches can be the worst offenders, by using shopping mall/theatre/coffee shop spatial language where it's really not appropriate. Because we aren't that. So it always feels weird, like something of a con.

I notice that even people that don't think deeply about spaces like I do notice when something is off, they just can't ascertain why. And one of the things that's off in emergent churches is the lack of any spatial authenticity. We keep telling ourselves it's great, this shopping mall/theatre/coffee shop thing, but in reality it's really not working. In fact, it's often working against us.

So the challenge is interpreting sacred spatial forms and language in new ways that really deeply speak to your church and its mission and how it functions (and that can still include coffee).

But defining it is hard work! It take a lot more thought than getting someone to throw up a metal building with x number of classrooms and a hall that seats x number of people, and that is, I think why many churches don't do it.

You do need a congregational champion. It could be a staff member or a lay person, but it should be someone that you think has some talent in the area of design, who has a good 'eye', and who can communicate well to people that don't think about design at all, or have never been inside a great building in their life. Building a great building will mean moving people beyond their preconceived notions of what a church *should* be, whether that's the older woman who wants red brick and white columns or the young skater that insists that nothing should 'look' like a church. Both biases can thwart a thoughtful process.

Our church spent a full year and a half in the design process. So even if you're thinking about building well into the future, start now! Most people go to an architect or builder way, way too early.  If they haven't developed their own thoughts, they'll inevitably get the architect/builder's thoughts. And that's not a good solution.

The other issue is people in the church don't initially know what they want, or can't enunciate it well. Simple polling, like "how big should the nursery be?" or "should we have a gym?" doesn't help, because people just give pat answers based on what they already know. You have to be very creative about drawing out their needs and desires for a new building. We spent the whole first month looking at church design throughout history, from the early church to the present day. The last week of that series was spent on modern church architecture, to see how the idioms of the sacred are being interpreted in new ways.

Then we started digging in to function (which should beget form, not the other way around). The first week we just talked about our existing space. We ranked the church on the ancient Roman principles of commodity (how well does it accommodate the people/events held there), firmness (how well does it work as a system, this includes things like say, toilets, and AV), and delight (beauty). The congregation scored the existing building really low on 'delight'. Now if I had just come in and asked the "is the aesthetic appeal of a building important to you", they would have said not so much. But working through the questions made it clear that aesthetics were actually really important to them.

In other weeks we made bubble diagrams, cut up and rearranged the existing floor plan, and answered the famous architectural question (as formulated by Louis Kahn) "What does a church want to be?"

All of these were just ways of ascertaining further the congregation's values for the building and the spaces within it. Only after that summer did we go to our architects with a brief for the design.

Defining your own values in advance is what will enable you to choose the right architect. Prior to working with drdh from London (our current firm) we had a failed effort with a local firm that just was unable to design to the 'Light and Truth' idea. But had we not already made our own design definition we may not have realized that they weren't the right firm for us.

And of course even after your architects present you with a design there are many more meetings to examine and refine the plans. It's important to prepare the church to understand that formulating a great design is like a long and complicated conversation. Most people in my congregation didn't know anything beyond ordering a house plan out of a catalog. It was hard to keep them patient with the back and forth, the many adjustments involved in working through a design, particularly an innovative one. But they've been troopers.

So I guess to summarize I would say that designing a church is a process in which you reap what you sow. Make a serious investment of prayer and thoughtfulness and effort into the process, and it will be worth it all. As our congregation's design champion, I spent extensive time studying the scriptures around the construction of the tabernacle and Solomon's temple. I am utterly in awe of the privilege of building the house of God. It deserves the absolute best that any congregation can bring to it. And to do less, I think, is to miss an opportunity to honor our awesome God.

Saint Anna's Chapel, Torre del Lago Italy,Vardemaro Barbetta, 1973, renovated 2013

 And speaking of outdoor church, the lovely 1973 chapel of Saint Anna's, which is more like a garden pavilion, really, has recently been renovated after being closed since 2010 because of structural issues.

The chapel was treated with great sensitivity; its moss-covered roof was retained in order to preserve the structure's age and harmony with the landscape even while old steel fixings were replaced.

Can I say again how much I wished churches would move out into their landscapes with more than parking lots?

This project was initiated by another Anna, Vardemaro Barbetta's mother.  What a beautiful way to honor one's mother.

[via dezeen]

The Hill of Crosses, Šiauliai Lithuania

For Good Friday, Lithuania's Hill of Crosses.
Outdoor Church and Interactive Landscape Art Installation, all in one.

It is thought that the first crosses were placed on this hilltop--the site of an old fort--in about 1831 to remember those soldiers whose bodies were not recovered after the first uprising against the Russians.    More crosses were placed in 1863 after  a second uprising, and by the twentieth century the hill of crosses was firmly established as a place of sacred pilgrimage and national prayer.  When Lithuania was occupied by the Soviets it became a site of peaceful resistance.  The wooden crosses were burned, the metal crosses scrapped, and the hill bulldozed three times under Soviet occupation.  But the crosses continued to reappear in spite of militia and KGB guards.  Today, the site symbolizes the resiliency of faith under oppression.

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[images via wikipedia and throughthetorncurtain]

Quaker Meeting House and Arts Center, Sidwell Friends School, Kieran Timberlake, 2013

In a time when too many churches choose gymnasiums as spaces for worship (what does it say about us that we build places that are first for sport and only second for worship?)  it is refreshing to see a project that transforms a gym away from its noisy recreational focus and makes it a contemplative space.

The Sidwell friends Friends School, a K-12 Quaker school in Washington, D.C. converted an existing 1950s gymnasium that had been used as a makeshift worship space for decades into a permanent worship space, with decisions about space, light, and materials inspired by the Quaker tradition.

"Daylight was used to organize the space. The Meeting House is focused on a central focal point illuminated from above, with targeted views to the gardens and soft filtered light also coming through on all sides. The materials palette was limited to only wood and plaster. In old meeting houses wood is often used in places where it may be touched; after centuries, it retains its integrity and character. In the new Meeting House, oak from long-unused Maryland barns was used to line the lower walls and floor. The exterior, too, is clad with black locust harvested from a single source in New Jersey."

In keeping with Quaker tradition, the pews are arranged in a non-hierarchical, four-square manner; there is no 'front' or 'back' in the gathering of friends.

The project by Kieran Timberlake used 'minimal means' and organized itself around the central symbolism of a skylight providing illumination both literal and physical.

It received an Institute Honor Award for 2014 from the American Institute of Architects.

The Minimum Bible, Joseph Novak, 2014

Presbyterian pastor and graphic artist Joseph Novak has distilled the central concepts of each of the 66 books of the Bible into a set of minimalist posters/book covers that he calls the Minimum Bible series.   He views them as a 'diving board' into the text.  His design of concentric circles for the book of Genesis, for example, not only references its role as the book of origins but also the ripple effect created by the introduction of sin.

"At its heart, the story is really this brief image in a reflecting pool of Utopia but by the third chapter, a stone has been tossed into the pond and the ripples of that stone spread throughout the rest of the book.”

Everything returns to its center, though in Revelations.  The Job cover is typographic, striking through the promises to highlight his lament, but most of the posters are pictograms:   'Samuel' references David and Goliath, 'Acts' riffs on the expansion of the early church, we can see the 'road' of Romans, and some of the posters reference key scriptures, like the "In Christ there is no Jew or Greek, bond or free, male or female" of Galatians.

Take the time to peruse the entire set; they're also available for purchase.  Joseph hopes the project will also create an increased design awareness among in the Christian community.  I do too.

(First found at fastcodesign.com; see also previous posts on the Summer Bible, and the Pentagram pocket canons)