In defense of worship spaces

13 Comments

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.

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  • Julie

    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.

    • http://www.facebook.com/christine.greenland.5 Chris­tine Greenland

      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.

  • Mar­shall Massey (Iowa YM [C])

    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.

  • Meg

    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).

  • Let­ters From The Street

    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.

    • http://www.martinkelley.com/ Mar­tin Kelley

      Oh it’s you Bruce?! Good, thanks, I’ll update the post with this info. Since you’re active on Quak­erQuaker (http://​www​.quak​erquaker​.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.

      • Let­ters From The Street

        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.

  • Let­ters From The Street

    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.

  • Alice Yax­ley

    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.

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

  • Mitzy1991

    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.

  • Patri­cia Barber

    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.”

    • http://www.facebook.com/julielizabet Julie Hei­land

      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

  • Alice Yax­ley

    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.