Your Church Is Too
T
Sexy:
Why Church Architecture Matters
by Chad Bird
he chandelier is fashioned from fingers, toes, skulls, and a whole skeleton’s worth of other bones. There are chalices, candelabras, pillars, and other artwork, all forged from the remains of saints. In fact, over 40,000 people are crammed into this Sedlec Ossuary, a small church in the Czech Republic—at least, parts and pieces of them are. The obvious question is why? You might say that, inside this Bone Church, an artist has literalized the verse,“surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses” (Hebrews 12:1). These skeletal “witnesses,”gathered from the nearby church cemetery when the citizens eventually ran out of burying room, were artistically arranged to form this most unique architecture. And while it’s a bit creepy, this creation confesses a truth about which today’s church is often mute: that within the walls of God’s house, we are never alone. Now let’s slip inside another church. This one is worlds away from the Bone Church’s rather raw architecture. Welcome to Lakewood Church, in Houston, Texas, where Joel Osteen serves as pastor. Maybe you’ve heard of this popular preacher or seen his books. Osteen’s congregation has mushroomed over the decades to out-mega all other mega
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churches. To fit everyone in, they transformed the sports arena, where the Houston Rockets used to play, into a 16,000-seat worship facility. One end of the stadium was gutted and remodeled to become what traditionally would be known as the chancel. Two 30-foot waterfalls gurgle and splash on either side of this platform. Three massive screens project images of the preacher or other worship leaders.
