Designing Church
I’ll admit – I’m a sucker for good design. I love great “album” art, love staying at a W hotel, love a slick website. Design is great. But design is never the point. Want proof? Look at the homepages of Google and Craigslist. Google and Craigslist sit as the crowned King and Prince of the Internet. And yet…they lack any sense of aesthetic. There is absolutely nothing beautiful or inspiring about how they look. Their beauty is in their platform. Their wisdom is in their simplicity, functionality, and usability.
They win because they work.
This is a profound truth that I need to be reminded of often. As we are in the process of building Soul City Church, the temptation is strong to focus on the aesthetic. To look cool. To sound cool. To be cool. To have a hip, eye-catching web site, to have creative names for ordinary things, to (for lack of a better word) – impress. These things may be important and they may attract people. But they will never, in and of themselves, keep people or transform people.
This is not to say that design doesn’t matter. Creation is a living breathing example of perfectly balanced form and function. God created trees and flowers that are unnecessarily beautiful. He created clouds that are regularly painting themselves anew across their great blue canvas sky. There are ocean waves that echo the ancient metronome of creation. These are all part of the absolutely beautiful design that is Creation. But what makes them divinely inspired is their function. They give fruit, shade, rain, wood, water, nourishment. They work…beautifully.
In laying the foundations of Soul City Church we don’t ever want our form to become more important than our function. We don’t ever want this church to look better than it works. Design is great and has it’s place, but I have yet to meet someone who’s life was radically transformed by Photoshop. Design is great and has its place, but that place is after, not before. That place is on the top, not at the bottom.
Design is great and does matter, but it must never matter more than people.
