My latest article for the National Crankypants Newsletter:
I am reading a love and fascinating book called The Not-So-Big House by Sarah Susanka, an architect who has worked with families to make their homes more livable. What she has noticed over the years is that people often buy the largest house they can afford, even when the home does not fit their personality. Large McMansions with grand entryways and high-ceilinged “great rooms” can feel more like showpieces than cozy and comfortable places where a family can truly live. (I’ve read that the average home in the 1950s was less than 1,000 square feet; today it is more than 2,300.) And even as we crave additional space, many of us live in homes in which entire rooms—living room, formal dining room— remain virtually untouched except for a few times a year.
We see this dynamic at work when we host parties in our homes. People will congregate in the kitchen, the “heart of the house” according to Susanka, even if it’s too small to hold them and despite our efforts to direct them to the “nicer” rooms. Susanka tells of one party in which the host kept saying, “Refreshments are in the living room!” People would wander back into the kitchen with a plate of delicious food and people would say, “Ooh, where did you get that?”
Her point, I’m discovering, is not that large houses are bad and small houses are good. In fact, size is somewhat irrelevant. The point is that the house should fit the life of the people occupying it. Susanka believes that we are living in homes that are more fitting for our grandparents’ style of living.
As we think about the church of the 21st century, I wonder if some of us are living in our grandparents’ houses.
As Christians, we are called to the radical practice of hospitality—welcoming friend and stranger in the name of Christ. Many of us are talking more and more about how our practices can be welcoming. But what about our space? Our furnishings? What does a church “parlor” communicate to a young adult who has never darkened the door of a church? What about a sterling silver communion set? A pipe organ? I don’t presuppose any answers (some young people do like the organ!), but the questions are worth asking. I propose a walking tour of our church buildings—examining every sign, nook, hallway—imagining both the people who currently inhabit the space as well as the people who could use the space. Is the space inviting or is it a barrier?
We know these questions are fraught with emotion. Folks in our churches remember the lovely teas that the Presbyterian Women hosted in the church parlor, the communion set that their great aunt donated to the church, the pomp-and-circumstance hymns played on the organ at their own wedding. In the same way, my husband and I have fond memories of many dinners around his grandmother’s formal dining room table, which now sits in our own dining room. To this day I love having Thanskgiving at that table. Yet I wonder what would happen if we converted that dining space (which we use three times a year, at best) into something else. A permanent craft room where art supplies are always out and available for our kids to do creative projects together? A library with a soft rug, comfy chairs (adult and kid sizes) surrounded by shelves and shelves of books?
It seems like a minor heresy. How could we part with our grandmother’s dining room table? But which is a more fitting way to honor her—by holding on to the furniture she gave us, or by creating a hospitable place in which future generations of her family can be nurtured?
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isn’t the answer to your last question, framed in the way it is, a no-brainer? I mean who would answer, “no, my dear, we don’t want to create a hospitable place where our children and their children can be nurtured.”
Uh oh. I think I get it. You mean that some folks actually would say that they would prefer to hang on to granma’s table than nurture the young in that same space. Maybe putting it in just this way, kindly, to granma’s table cult would help to reframe the whole conversation.
Well, I *hope* it reframes things rather than being a strawman. I don’t deny that the pull toward our grandparents’ things (in church and in life) is strong. I loved the emergent conversations at the Crankypants event yesterday, and to me, “faithful improvisation” means that we keep the table, but maybe we use it in some other way. In other words, the tradition is not our enemy, but a living entity with which, and in which, we co-create.
I had a conversation with an older woman about the use of technology in worship. Please know that I am a cautious and careful user of screens and such in worship. I’m no apologist by any means. But she and I were talking about how we are in a more visual culture and this sort of technology can be a means of communicating the good news to people who don’t already possess the language of faith. She said testily, “So they never had anything to do with church and now we’re just supposed to bend over backwards for them? It’s their problem if they don’t like the way we do things.”
No joke.
I’ve bounced around so much that “grandma’s table” was probably dumped years ago. I have the problem of both totally not understanding the allure of the table while understanding that this lack of understanding means I may have missed something deep and worthwhile along the way.
Does the tumbleweed envy the oak’s root structure, or does it seem unnecessary and an impediment to progress?
I dunno. Tumbleweeds tumble and oak trees loom overhead (but not necessarily in the same place). Each one plays its part, and when they live in harmony, it’s a wonderful thing.
Just in case you’re running low in the Platitude Dept. - if you do the same things, you’ll get the same results. If you want something different - well, something else needs to be done. What else? Ask the tumbleweed, or the oak.
XT
I too like the notion of faithful improvisation.
In other space we finally changed our sanctuary - after 6 1/2 years of my gentle, laid back but persistent request to altar our worship space in a particular way. The resistance was fear that folks would freak out - granma’s table would be offended - but no on ever actually verifed the fear. So when we finally got it done, rearranged the choir, piano and organ, everyone, that is everyone! - is glad. several said to me “what took this so long? Should have been done 20 years ago.” There is a moral to the story here, don’t you think? Moving granma’s table or making it more accessible to the whole community is a good thing if you can imagine it coming into being, the problem may be the difficulty of imagining something beyond our fears and actually steppping into it. At least one role of leaders is to lead people into the new land that can only be imagined - from the mundane like changing worship space to other more sublime ventures.
I love this conversation! I think it is so possible to incorporate the old into a new creation - workable and meaningful to both the older and newer generations. Why does it have to be so hard to do??
My colleague and I joked we wanted to unlock the cabinet that held the sterling silver communion set, leaving it open with the hope someone would steal it. But then we realized without some education, someone would go out and buy a new set.
Several years later, after conversations and education, we re-designed our worship space to be almost in the round, incorporating tradition and contemporary. Big learning point for me: what most people think is tradition is really socially constructed understanding of worship—we create worship to fit a norm, power and comfort zone. Once we got to the point of connecting what should be based on early church, biblical understandings of worship, we have this sanctuary based on the principals of welcome, intimacy, community and equality. We don’t use the sterling communion set anymore. Nobody misses it.
I love creative re-use. I’m enough of a sentimental person that I hate dumping out old “stuff” but I like to see it re-tooled, re-worked. My dad took his mother’s dining room table, and cut the legs down to coffee table height. It’s now the best ever coffee table–when they want to eat in the living room, they pull up the sides. (We can squish 8 people around it for pizza on the floor). I love that it’s grandma’s table, and that meals were shared there–but it’s re-used, re-tooled.
We had a worship service a couple weeks ago that was entirely old texts to new tunes, and i LOVED it. I love the Hampton “There’s a Wideness” and there’s a gorgeous new tune for “Love Divine.”
What surpises me is that my college students are the same way. They don’t want to tear the pews out of the chapel (though the liturgist does). They just want to re-arrange them. They don’t want to get rid of the organ. They just want to pair it with piano. They’re sort of cutting down mama’s wedding dress to make a new veil. Well, they would be if people let them.
Great article.
You raise so many good points.
But on the home front, remember those little children of yours will be big children someday, and the dining room table won’t seem so out of scale for your family’s needs. There is nothing I like better than sitting at my mother’s old table in our dining room, with all the people I love most. Yes, like a house church, they will outgrow the space, psycho-spiritual if not physical, and form their own homes in time. But for now, we are all nurtured around that table.
And at that point we re-convert the space, right? Rather than leaving it as a museum piece while waiting for that day to come. That was my point.
good point.
See, here’s the thing: I WANT to use the old sterling communion set. Just not as a communion set. I wish I could think of a creative re-use of it, because to me its history is so precious…but I can’t think of one right now. I wish I could.
I did visit a church that had this really, really cool display in its fellowship hall. It was a display of crosses—I guess it started after a renovation and there was a sanctuary cross with sentimental value. Anyway, that cross was there, but also handcrafted crosses from every region where they’d done a mission trip, Sunday School crafts…it was beautiful.
I guess I agree with PPB. Keep the table - but either civerit with a protetive cloth for Artys craftsy stuff, or manuver it to use as a reading/writing table in the “library.”
Use the old communion set as part of baptisim. Use the chalace (sp?) for the water pourer - how much more literal can we get with washing away the sin with Christ’ blood??
There can be the mix of mom and dad and grandma and grandpa with Greeday and The Donnas. You just do it. Don’t think about it.
Beth
Sure, form and re-form.
That’s what I preached about the other day. But I guess I want to say be careful about what is discarded along the way in case it becomes useful again in a different way. It’s the baby/bathwater dilemma, isn’t it?
The first time I bought a piece of anything for my own house, with no one else’s input, it was an amazing experience. Churches that start from scratch get to do that, not only get to, but must. I find that enticing.