Where we meet is very important.  It is, of course, not as important as the living stones that are being plastered together as the church, but it is still important.  I am fascinated by how often people who think like we do on many different points, will balk at my emphasis on meeting  in the house.  Why is this? One reason, I think, is super-spirituality.  Let the organized church worry about buildings, these folks say, but we’re going to worry about building the body of Christ, and we can do that anywhere, in any building.  This sounds good, but it is entirely unrealistic.

Architects and business consultants have realized for a long time that buildings and their accouterments will affect people’s moods and relationships.  One thinks of the proverbial banker’s desk and visitor’s chair.  When you sit in the chair, the desk is about neck-high, and you feel very small and very inferior to the banker.  Take another example: suppose you want to have close, intimate communion with your brothers and sisters.  You go to a church building.  You put the chairs in a circle.  You’re still faced with the open spaces that kill intimacy, and make it hard to hear.  You’ve got cold fluorescent lights overhead.  And you’ve got decades of acculturation to deal with.  When you’re in a building, you’re used to thinking institutionally and formally.

Let me quote from a writer who believes in church life, but who thinks the building in which the church meets is not important.  Cliff Bjork, in a generally favorable review of a Gene Edwards article in Searching Together (Vol. 18:1, 2 - 1989), states the following:  “I do not believe that the answer lies in forsaking ‘church buildings’ in favor of ‘living rooms.’  Nor are sweat shirts and jeans inherently more conducive to effective fellowship and ministry than three piece suits and neckties.  It seems to me that such proposals merely exchange one external ‘hang-up’ for another.  To prove that there were no ‘church buildings’ in the first few decades of the church’s existence is to prove nothing.  There were also no automobiles, or telephones, or computers, or printing presses . . .  Should we also view these advances as detrimental to church life?  Or does the real problem actually lie in the way we use these tools?  If a church ‘building’ is worshiped more than the One in whose name we gather, something has certainly gone wrong.  If such is the case, selling the building and crowding into a living room will do little to solve the problem.  What is needed is a change of heart and mind, not of location and surroundings . . . It is just as easy to spawn and perpetuate false teaching, factionalism, groundless ritual, and stifling traditions in a living room as it is in a ‘church building.’  And one can be deliberately ostentatious in ragged jeans and worn-out Reeboks as in a well pressed suit and polished wingtips.”

Let’s examine one by one the propositions set forth above.  The first is, “I do not believe that the answer lies in forsaking ‘church buildings’ in favor of ‘living rooms’.”  This is a half-truth, and like all half-truths, it is entirely misleading.  Of course, exchanging church buildings in favor of living rooms is not the whole answer.  It is however, part of the answer.  In fact, it is a necessary part of the answer (although it is not sufficient in and of itself).  More on this later.

The second proposition is, “Sweat shirts and jeans are not inherently more conducive to fellowship and ministry than three piece suits and neckties.”  At this point, you will have to excuse me.  Heretofore, I have been measured, rational, and moderate.  But I refuse to be measured, rational, and moderate when one tries to defend neckties.  Ladies and gentlemen, if you want to grab hold of a piece of wisdom that will bless you for the rest of your life, please listen to this truth: neckties are of the devil!  I know a brother who calls a necktie a “choking spirit.”  He’s right.  The problem is not merely that the thing is so utterly useless; rather, a necktie is a positive evil.  It’s very purpose is to choke off intimacy, and establish formality.  It is actually written in the code of ethics for lawyers that they have to wear “appropriate” dress, so as not to bring disrepute on the profession.  Have you ever seen a lawyer at work without a necktie?  The purpose  is to establish professionalism.  The purpose is to make you think that he is competent, intelligent, and important.  It’s purpose is not to make you more intimate with him.  How many people do you know that insist on wearing a tie to church, then go home and wear one?  They don’t.  Why?  Because they are with their family, and they don’t need to be formal with their family.  Why do Christians need to be formal with their brothers and sisters?  I know of many churches which started wonderfully, and then began to institutionalize.  It is inevitable that at some point along the way, the leaders will be told they must wear ties.  It is at this point that you may be certain the church has died, just as you know a patient has died when his EKG shows no brain waves.

Bjork’s third point is, “To prove that there were no church buildings in the early church is to prove nothing.  There were also no automobiles, or telephones, or computers, or printing presses.”  And, of course, as this old argument runs, there is nothing wrong with cars or phones, they are morally neutral, they can be used for good as well as bad, and so can church buildings.  This argument has a surface validity, but it is fallacious.  A church building is not “morally neutral.”  It is not an adventitious piece of technology that can be used for good or evil.  If church buildings are not important, why have Christians sunk 180 billion dollars into building them?  If you don’t think they are important, go ask a traditional church pastor to sell his church building and give the money to the poor in the name of Jesus, and see what kind of response you’ll get.  Of all the money Christians faithfully put in the plate, how much of it goes to the gospel, or to the needy, and how much goes to the parking lots, the steeples, the carpets?  How many church splits are generated by disputes over the color of carpets, the placement of church furniture, and other momentous issues?  Everyone reading this knows as well as I do that the church building today is nothing more than a holy shrine, a phony substitute temple for the true temple of God, which is the body of Christ.  People don’t fight over computers, automobiles, telephones, and printing presses.  But they will fight over a church building.  Why?  Because the church building has become an idolatrous object of worship.

His fourth statement is that “What is needed is a change of heart and mind, not of location and surroundings.”  This argument is one whose foundation rests in super-spirituality.  It would work if human beings were airy wraiths who floated through life totally unaffected by their grubby material surroundings.  But unfortunately, we humans are very much influenced by our surroundings.  Lets take this argument to its logical extreme.  Suppose you had a brother who was destitute, jobless, homeless, and miserable.  Would you tell him, “Brother, what you need is a change of heart and mind, not a change of location and surroundings!”?
 We cannot divorce our attitudes and assumptions from the environmental influences  which shape us from a very young age.  Thus, if a child attends church his whole life in a church building, he or she will wind up later in life thinking that church buildings hold a holy position in God’s eyes as the appropriate place to meet.  To say that we should examine our hearts before we examine our church buildings ignores the reciprocal influence that each has on the other.

A fifth assertion by Bjork is that “It is just as easy to spawn and perpetuate false teaching, factionalism, groundless ritual, and stifling traditions in a living room as it is in a ‘church building’.”  This is not true.  Although false teaching, factionalism, groundless ritual, etc. can easily be spawned in a house, it is not true that they can easily be perpetuated in a living room.  Why?  Because it takes the living Christ dwelling inside people to keep the church alive without bureaucracy, ritual, and building.  And as soon as the life of Christ is replaced by fleshly substitutes, the house church dies, because there is not bureaucracy, ritual, and building to keep it perpetuated.  In fact, as human flesh moves in on a house church, you will begin to hear calls for one or more of three things: pastors, buildings, and neckties.  Why the call for a building?  Because human flesh loves illusions of permanence, beauty, and protection.  And if Jesus isn’t providing those things, fleshly religious people are going to instinctively look to a building for a substitute.  This is not to blame the death and fleshiness on the building, but it is to say that the building is the outward sign of the death and fleshiness that is within.  While we’re on the subject of church buildings, lets talk about the furniture inside of church buildings.

For instance, they line you up so you can fellowship with the back of your brother’s or sister’s head.  Pews don’t promote intimacy, but rather cold formality.  They also cost  a small fortune.

As Gene Edwards often points out, pulpits (lecturns) came from Martin Luther.  Luther had been given control of formerly Catholic cathedrals.  He was preaching in one of them, needed a place to prop his notes, looked up and saw on a pillar the little rostrum or pulpit that the Catholic priest had climbed up to in order to read weekly announcements.  Luther ripped out the old Catholic altar, and replaced it with the Protestant pulpit.  This is used today to make the person standing behind it feel big and important.  It is made to awe you, the humble pew-sitter, to keep you from asking questions, and from falling asleep.  Its very presence is intimidating to dialogue, communication, and sharing.

An altar in the OT is a place where a sacrifice was slain.  The OT foreshadowed the sacrifice of Jesus in the NT, so it seems to me that the only “altar” in the NT is the cross, upon which Jesus was slain.  This, however, does not stop the very many institutional churches who put little padded benches up front and call them “altars.”  But, even if they are called “prayer benches,” or something similar, they still reinforce the idea that there’s something going on up front apart from the audience.  The altar is just one more piece of  religious furniture that reinforces spectator Christianity, the kind that Watchman Nee said engenders “passivity and death.”

So far this critique of church buildings has focused on two main points: their obscene and wasted expense, and their frequent use as idolatrous substitutes for the worship of Christ.  However, there are other reasons we should avoid church buildings like the plague.
 One reason is that buildings are harmful to church life because they permit the church to grow to such a size that it is impossible to have intimate fellowship anymore.  How many times have you heard Christians say, “This was a wonderful church back in the old days when we were small, but now we don’t know anybody.”  A house church can never grow that large, because not everyone can fit in the living room.  (Which means, incidentally, that for house churches to grow, they must divide and multiply.)

Another reason is that certain normative NT practices can’t be accomplished easily in a large church setting.  For example, weekly partaking of the Lord’s Supper, taking of the Lord’s Supper with one loaf and one cup, partaking of the Lord’s Feast, and mutual participation and sharing are  easily handled in a house church setting, but not so in larger institutional churches.

 A third reason not to have a special building is the total absence in scripture of instructions to construct such buildings.  If we obey the commandment in De 12:32, we must not add to God’s word.  It is only logical to assume that if God wanted us to have buildings, He would have so ordered in His Word.  Consider that all of the gospel and letter writers in the NT, with the exception of Luke, participated in temple worship.  It is highly significant that not one of them ever built or instructed anyone to build any type of Christian building.  This includes Paul, Peter, and John.  The absence of special buildings in the NT is noteworthy to say the least.

Finally, it has never been the way of God to extend His witness through a building made with the hands of human beings!  His method of extending his witness is through the flesh, blood, and bones of the believing body of Jesus Christ, and not a building.  The entire book of Acts verifies this doctrinal truth.  How much it must grieve the heart of God to watch His body operate in the unsuccessful Jewish method of witness extension: confining the primary energies, ministries, and vision of God to a building.  God’s commission to His church is to go to the lost in their environment, not invite them into an edifice!  We must get out of this inwardly focused building mentality and into real ministry.