A few weeks ago I saw a picture of a highly decorated church. Everything was covered in gold inlay and very bright colors. Maybe I am weird, but I got the impression that being in that church to long without sun glasses would cause me to get a headache it was so bright.
I know that Christianity has been driving art forward for two thousand years, so if that kind of art was to your taste, I guess it was OK. What bothered me was the comments made by people who thought that simple looking churches must not be churches that like Christ very much. Those comments bothered me a lot!
Christianity isn’t about buildings. It is about souls. When I was looking at this, in my opinion overly decorated building, I could not help but wonder how many people starved to death in that very neighborhood when that church was being built. Wouldn’t that money have been better spent feeding the sheep of Christ, in a time when so many in that country was starving?
God doesn’t need a building to live in.
Thus says the LORD: “Heaven is my throne and the earth is my footstool; what is the house which you would build for me, and what is the place of my rest? All these things my hand has made, and so all these things are mine, says the LORD. But this is the man to whom I will look, he that is humble and contrite in spirit, and trembles at my word.” (Isaiah 66:1)
God isn’t concerned with our buildings half as much as he is our spirit. The building you go to on Sunday could be the most fancy building in the world, but if the building contains only people who are spiritually dead, it doesn’t impress God in the slightest.
A church sermon conducted in an old worn out building that is ready to change the world for Christ however will be filled with the Spirit of God!
That fancy building that you are investing in could be wiped out tomorrow by any number of disasters, but if the people in that building helped lead a soul to heaven, that will last forever.
Wanda Zippler
Smart Christian.net 