The Process Of Building And Renovating A Church

The article illustrates the importance of identifying a process for making decisions in building and renovation projects. The final product will satisfy the community's needs only in proportion to the time spent in soliciting opinions, educating the members, and consulting experts. Stakes are high when modifying worship patterns. The way people worship does not just reflect their beliefs-it cultivates and shapes those beliefs as well. The early church identified this mutual interaction between the liturgy and faith through reflecting on its own experience. The contemporary church is recovering the significance of this insight as it applies it to the design or redesign of a place of worship. To move ceremonial objects in a church, let alone to shift the walls or the orientation in a worship space, moves sensibilities in ways which help or hinder. How do we judge what assists or obstructs? Who makes these judgments? For eight years I have been helping communities throughout the United…