The article illustrates the importance of identifying a process for making decisions in building and renovation projects. The final product will satisfy the community’s needs only in proportion to the time spent in soliciting opinions, educating the members, and consulting experts.
Stakes are high when modifying worship patterns. The way people worship does not just reflect their beliefs—it cultivates and shapes those beliefs as well. The early church identified this mutual interaction between the liturgy and faith through reflecting on its own experience. The contemporary church is recovering the significance of this insight as it applies it to the design or redesign of a place of worship. To move ceremonial objects in a church, let alone to shift the walls or the orientation in a worship space moves sensibilities in ways that help or hinder. How do we judge what assists or obstructs? Who makes these judgments?
For eight years I have been helping communities throughout the United States build or renovate their places of worship. As a consultant, I came to each group wanting to listen to the members’ expectations about their place for prayer. As a liturgist, I responded with the best of my training, in hopes that the final product would embody informed judgments and serve generations of Christians well.
After working with diverse communities, I have noticed a pattern that deflates spirits and depletes energies. I have confirmed this pattern with my liturgical colleagues. I wondered whether it would help if someone who regularly encounters these problems could alert those who are approaching the renovation or building of a church. The situation seems parallel to offering assistance to a couple approaching marriage. How can a young couple know the potential problems if they have never been married before or have never been part of the preparations for a family member’s or friend’s wedding? The same is true for renovating or building a church. How can a parish community know the pitfalls if it has never ventured into such a project before?
There is no need to reinvent the wheel. Too often, each worshiping community takes up the task of renovating or building a church as if it has never been done before. Communities need not work in a vacuum; information is available upon which to base informed decision making.
“Never Again”
Renovating or building worship space can be like having a baby. Sometimes it is hard to know what is going on. Sometimes it just hurts. Sometimes the stirring of new life is felt along with the sense that this might work and come out all right after all. When the renovation or building comes to term, the feeling is—one hopes—that it was all worth it. Unfortunately, this is not always the case.
The quality of the product depends upon the quality of the process. If the method of approaching the renovation or building is slipshod, the end product will likely be the same. As James White put it in Introduction to Christian Worship, “The process is as important as the product—especially when it comes to the people of God collaborating around the design of their space for worship.” What good is it if Christians go for the jugular in order to build a lovely church where they can celebrate their care for God and for one another? It happens all the time. Christian, atheist, and other-than-Christian architects and engineers have told me they approach the building of a church as if they are daring to go where angels fear to tread.
Who has the ultimate decision-making power? This should be clear to all from the outset. Too often, confusion reigns in this area and various individuals or groups misconstrue their roles as deliberative rather than consultative. Will final decisions be made by the pastor or by some committee? Are there constraints (e.g., the budget) over which the local community has little or no control? Is it out of the question, for reasons beyond local control, to consider a building on the property other than the existing one? Will eventual decisions made at the local church level need additional approval from some hierarchical body within the Christian tradition? Someone needs to offer a clear lead. Presenting the method or approach for decision making clearly can help both to allay fears and to provide data for a choice to get involved. Those convening the process need to think and plan carefully before beginning. Muddling through these questions with a large group of people leaves a wake of dead bodies or, more accurately, broken spirits. To proceed intelligently, a community may need outside assistance if local leaders have little expertise in renovating or building churches. This is all the more reason to proceed with caution and not in haste.
Let Every Worshiper Speak
Before renovating or building a church, everyone who desires to pray in the new worship space ought to be invited to speak his or her mind. Whoever chooses to be part of the smaller group overseeing the project needs to develop the skills of listening to worshipers who wish to speak. No matter how kooky or strange a reflection may seem, it still needs to be received with care, even if not with agreement. It is not helpful to offer impulsive responses while listening. There is no need for immediate judgment and quick closure. If people perceive, even incorrectly, that the pastor or some select group is attempting to railroad something through, they can react as if someone is running away with a precious part of their lives. If you do not give people the time and space to voice their concerns and to sense that their perspectives are considered, you seed the project with disaster.
Caution: Some people interpret careful listening as implicit agreement with what has been spoken. In one way or another, after all, have had their chance to speak and to be heard, the pastor or project leader needs to speak and to be heard. Without becoming defensive, the leader needs to provide some direction (at least concerning method) by way of response. Leaders need to make it clear that the project will not be the result of each person having an equal voice. The process for building or renovating a church is not democratic. Many Christians in the United States find the non-democratic process difficult to accept because it is so different from other parts of their life. Following the culture in this instance, at least uncritically, does not serve a community well.
Solicit the view of each person, listen to it, and promise to take it into consideration. But do not in any way pacify people in the short term with an ambiguous response that could be misconstrued to mean “Your way will win in the end” or “If you just convince enough people (and maybe circulate a petition), then you can get your way.” The all too common dynamic of “the squeaky wheel gets the grease” breeds an unhealthy spirit of competition and, more importantly, divides a community. A building project should not be a contest of wills. However, inviting opinions about what to do with the community’s worship space is potentially explosive. The person in charge needs to be politically savvy and must be able to make clear which norms must be used when making decisions.
Knowledge of Criteria
In the end, the spectrum of opinions needs to be sifted in light of a hierarchy of criteria, the most decisive of which are liturgical. Surely there are competing values: aesthetics (what individuals consider pleasing); devotional taste (how individuals prefer to relate to God and others in the church); cultural sensibilities (what people expect because of culture and custom); ecclesial understanding (what people believe about the relationships within the church—lay with clergy, the assembly with God, worshipers with each other); and financial realities (what people consider essential given limited funds, what people would want if additional sources of revenue could be found).
Once the consultation is completed, the liturgical criteria must be given priority. Values other than liturgical ones do matter and must temper decisions by, at the very least, improving the quality of understanding between the worshipers and the leadership. Values other than the liturgical ones, though, should not be determinant.
One of the most effective and liberating tools the church has at its disposal is knowledge. From a broad-based knowledge of liturgy, people can make informed choices for their renovation or building projects. If knowledgeable people are not available locally, the parish should invite competent outsiders to help the members, or at least the leader, understand more about the liturgical principles operative in this situation. For example, in the Roman Catholic tradition, those who will deliberate and decide upon the eventual shape of worship space need to understand, at the very least, the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy and Environment and Art in Catholic Worship. Structural engineers, artistic consultants, or architects should not be given the power to make decisions without demonstrating knowledge of the liturgical criteria.
Often I have seen well-intentioned but undereducated leaders of a renovation or building project relinquish decision-making power to individuals who claim liturgical competence. In reality, these artisans have made choices in brick and mortar, wood, and glass that betray priorities other than the liturgical ones. The end product, while lovely in its own way, does not serve the gathered community at prayer. Having a beautiful building does not necessarily mean having a good place for worship (see Bill Brown, AIA, “Space as Servant of the Assembly,” in Building and Renovation Kit for Places of Catholic Worship).
Timing
Timing is no small issue when modifying or building a church. It takes time to raise the funds necessary to complete the project. It takes time to raise the consciousness of those worshipers who are ready and willing to learn. If the leaders show a desire to learn, this will go a long way in fostering the receptivity of the worshipers to learning and possible change. The leaders must show that they do not know it all. Learning needs to happen on many fronts. Some individuals will not be ready and willing to learn more about liturgy but will want only to voice their preconceptions. Others will grow through the intelligent presentation of liturgical information, provided you offer it with care. This will take time. Those who tend to prefer quick decisions and action may be hard-pressed by the extended efforts needed to educate others. But the time and the effort put forth to help others understand are worth the trouble.
A few years ago, I explained to a beloved aunt the thinking behind the renovation of a church on which I had worked. With exasperation, she stated passionately her desire for the traditional church. I realized that my heart and my head were responding in different ways. With my heart, I felt compassion for my aunt who did not like this unfamiliar approach to how a church “should” look. With my head, I knew that traditional goes beyond the twentieth century and that the thinking behind the renovation I had explained was rooted in early church understanding and practice.
How traditional should Christians be? What should educated Christians use as the ultimate criteria for the design of liturgical space? The best of contemporary liturgical thinking has patristic roots. All the same, we need to be patient with people, like my aunt, who feel less and less at home in places of worship that are outside their experience. Feelings cannot be rationalized away, but people can be invited to reexamine them in light of new data. On many occasions, new learning has served to initiate remarkable movement. Will everyone learn? No, of course not. Will some people reconsider their perspectives in light of education? Yes. Will the numbers be sufficient to justify the time it took to offer education? As the American educator, Derek Bok said: “If you think education is expensive, try ignorance.”
The community needs to avail itself of the best thinking. This is especially true at the beginning. Doing this will benefit the community for years to come. Relegating decisions to popular opinion or to power broking will lead to a finished product with which nearly everyone will have problems. It will be like the horse that was put together by a committee and ended up looking more like a camel.
Worship is too important to be left to less than the best we can bring.