And later, we'll take a look at Acts 7:48-49

Today, we'll have a discussion of church building architecture, entitled "A Lesson in Extremes."

First, we have Crystal Cathedral in California. An embodiment of light and space, grandeur and intimacy, the glass structure is recognized the world over as an architectural treasure. It was featured recently alongside the Hagia Sofia, Notre Dame, St. Peter's Cathedral, and Barcelona's Segrada Familia in The History Channel's documentary "Building in the name of God."



Lovely!


Next, we'll take a look at the Church Under the Bridge, under I-35 and 4th Street, in Waco, Texas.



It's, uh, a bunch of people. Under a bridge.

Both are places people can go to worship God. Both teach and proclaim Christianity, although I imagine they are probably two slightly divergent "flavors" of Christianity.

Can two immensely opposite "institutions" truly stand for the same God? What say ye?

My Generation and "The Churched"

...The study shows that only 3% of 16 - to 29-year-old non-Christians express favorable views of evangelicals.

I'm in the midst of reading a book called unChristian, by David Kinnaman, the president of The Barna Group (good recommendation, Ron!). It studies Christianity's "slipping image" among young people. These people don't necessarily have a negative impression of Jesus, they just have a negative impression of CHRISTIANS.

I think that says something that we seriously need to take a look at. We discussed some of these same impressions back on this post.

Common negative perceptions include that present-day Christianity is judgmental (87%), hypocritical (85%), old-fashioned (78%), and too involved in politics (75%).

The "hypocritical" and "old-fashioned" doesn't surprise me. But three fourths believe that present-day Christianity is too involved in politics? Do American evangelicals need to seriously rethink their approach?

When young people were asked to identify their impressions of Christianity, one of the common themes was "Christianity is changed from what it used to be" and "Christianity in today’s society no longer looks like Jesus." These comments were the most frequent unprompted images that young people called to mind, mentioned by one-quarter of both young non-Christians (23%) and born again Christians (22%).

Young people think that Christianity in today's society no longer looks like Jesus. What does that tell us?

Then Peter Stood Up and Said, "If You'll Take a Look at Slide 3..."

Who are we as a church? What is the ratio of men to women? How old are we? What is our median income? How racially diverse are we?

What about our community? What does the community "around" our church look like? Who are the people we are trying to reach, trying to serve?

These are all questions we ask on a regular basis, especially if we belong to a large church. Surely it helps to know who we are, right? And if we want to reach people in our community, it can only help to know who THEY are. Even if we are focusing on relational evangelism, it still helps to know who we are trying to develop relationships with!

This might be one of the not-so-subtle differences you'll find between the 21st century, suburban Midwestern church, and the 1st century church you'll find in the Book of Acts. You didn't see Peter handing out demographic surveys on the day of Pentecost. I'm not sure Paul and Phillip were necessarily putting together PowerPoint presentations to show who their "target" was.

Yet surely it existed to some extent, right? Obviously they didn't have the same tools that we do today, but did they at least THINK about the kind of people that made up their local churches, and the kinds of people they were trying to reach?

One problem may be that our Bible, as authoritative as it is, doesn't contain ALL the facts from the daily lives of the apostles. There were, no doubt, things going on that were not recorded.

My thinking is that they just forgot to assign someone to take minutes in all of their elder meetings.

Anyway, the "demographic target" discussion is one where I'm torn, because let's admit it: The more time we spend looking at statistics in databases... The more time we spend breaking down our "constituency"... The more we look like an institution! A corporation!

The very thing we're trying so hard to avoid.

Like so many other issues, I just don't think it's completely avoidable in today's society, with the current setup of how our churches function. One problem may be that we want to emulate the early church, yet at the same time, we tend to view that same church as a bit of a fluid hippie commune, a bunch of excited young Christians living together and telling everyone they know about Jesus. With anarchy reigning.

But that's deceptive. Sure, it was new. They didn't have 2000 years of history and assumptions to fall back on. It was small, they were persecuted, and they weren't meeting in $14 million buildings, with worries of mortgage payments and electrical bills.

Yet they did have some structure. They did have a semblance of a plan. There were certain demographics (stereotypes?) associated with each city where people were sent to spread the gospel. Isn't that sort of the same thing?

So then: How important is it for us to know how many Hispanics, blacks, and Asians are in our churches? How important is it for us to know which ones make six (or seven) figures, and which ones are just scraping to get by?

How important is that information?