Up front I need to mention that I am not part of a faith community that meets in a traditional church building. These days that seems to surprise people. The faith community I am a part of meets in a facility that houses a number of community groups. It has its own beautiful appeal that speaks of God’s redeeming work and the embodiment of his community in all places.

That said, I have a craving to meet and worship in more traditional church spaces/sanctuaries/buildings with pews, candles, stained glass windows, images, an altar, the works. I don’t believe, at all, that they are required for Christian gatherings and worship and nor do I think they are the special dwelling place of God, but I am drawn to them nonetheless. For myself I have identified three key reasons for that.

In pointing these out I recognise they’re not everyone’s cup of tea and that not all church spaces can be ‘traditional’ but where churches have budgets for such things and the freedom to shape spaces I would like to push against the industrial warehouse trend where the focus has often been put on flash lighting, sound, and big screens. I’d like us to ask, what does it mean to create a sanctuary that tells the story of Christ, immerses people in it, and draws us to worship with something other than just lights, sounds, and words?

Here are my three reasons why I love traditional church buildings:

1. They Tell a Story

When we follow Jesus we recognise that all things are part of a dynamic story. That story is told in the pages of scripture and visible throughout history. If we call ourselves ‘Christian’ and align ourselves to Jesus then we are aligning to, and placing ourselves within that story. That story can be remembered, internalised, and told with words; in songs, sermons, conversations, scripture reading and various other verbal methods, and it can also be told through visual elements.

When I step into traditional church buildings where people have sought to creatively create a sanctuary, I step into the telling of that story through architecture, visual elements like stations of the cross, images, candles, and an altar. I’m drawn into participating in the surroundings and the story as an act of worship through things like the pews that I can sit in, the prayer kneelers that call me to stop striving and start kneeling, and the candles I can light as symbols of prayer and focus. My attention is drawn to various visual elements that capture my attention and turn it towards God and his story.

When you place liturgy, incense, the practice of the Eucharist, robes, and various other elements into the mix, I find the resulting immersion into the story and the worship within it stunning and extremely moving.

2. They Act as a Haven

I am an introvert, but much of my work and mission in life involves interacting with people. I enjoy it and live for it, but I also like to switch off.

I would describe myself as someone with an orthodox core, but fuzzy edges. Fuzzy edges in the sense that while I have an orthodox faith (I align with the historical Christian creed), I maintain a fuzzy edge that has space for interaction with people wherever they are at from atheist to fundamentalist and all the myriad of colour between that and sideways from it.

I’m constantly interested in finding language and concepts that allow my sense of spirituality to interact with that of others even if our basic worldview is entirely different. This creates a level of constantly being switched on. Therefore traditional church buildings are something I enter as a haven where I can pause, breath, just be ‘in’ the space that reflects my core story, and not have to think. It gives me a space to just ‘be’ with my ‘source.’

It’s something I enjoy doing midweek when there is usually nobody in such churches. For this reason I appreciate Catholic and Anglican churches that are always open, allowing people like myself to enter them as havens and sanctuaries even if it’s just for a few minutes.

3. They Are Prophetic

We live in a culture of constant pace, change, pursuit, work, attempts to fit in, to be something and somebody, and to try and impress. We’re bombarded with constant stories that seek to capture our imagination and in our consumer societies, those stories are often around what we need to have or do so we can meet the requirements of our culture and have others think well of us.

Traditional churches stand as a voice that beckons us into something deeper and they speak against all of that noise. They tell us there is something that is unchanging, something deeper, something mysterious, something that touches the core of our humanity when so many other things push us and pull us in all directions. They call us to take moments to stop and be.

They also challenge our generational and individualistic arrogance. Traditional church buildings speak of a story that is thousands of years old and they connect us into that story, placing us in the wisdom, the creativity and the beauty of generations that have gone before us. Yet at the same time, they remind us of the brokenness of those who have professed that story and committed wrongs anyway, reminding us that no generation is guilt free. Our beauty, and our brokenness, drawn into the story.

I could add a fourth reason in that they don’t require charismatic personalities in order to draw us into a sense of worship, but just saying that without an explanation probably makes enough of a point.

I firmly believe traditional churches set aside, not as multi-purpose facilities, but as specific sanctuaries dedicated to Christian worship have true value. If you’ve grown up in them and can’t see it, I’d encourage you to take another look. If you have the privilege of shaping such a space, I would encourage you to truly spend time thinking about what it might mean to shape something that captures these three things. Tell a story, act as a haven, and speak prophetically.