Excerpt from Authentic Pursuit (Chapter 3)

Keep Church Simple

When we were in the basement, there wasn’t a whole lot we could do to renovate it to make it look like a “church.” No matter how much décor or embellishments we added, at the end of the day, it was a basement, and everybody who came to our meetings knew it and didn’t seem to mind too much. But when God gave us a new building that was a little bit nicer, we came to a crossroads as a church. We could go all out and invest a lot of our money, time, and resources into transforming our new space into a facility that fit inside the mold of what people expected when they heard the word “church,” or we could just keep it simple, and challenge people to view the church as something more than just a building. 

For some reason, in the American church, buildings and all of the adornments that go with them have become the golden calves of our culture. I heard an older pastor once talk about meetings he often has over lunch with younger pastors who are just starting churches or ministries. He said when he asks them about their church, they hardly ever talk about God and what God is doing in their midst. Most of the time, they talk about church-growth methods, their budget, and their buildings. Hear me out—none of those things are bad, but those aren’t what we’re called to worship. A building is just brick and mortar—there is nothing sacred or intrinsically spiritual about having a certain type of building. Most church historians believe the first-century Church met mostly in homes, and the first church buildings did not start to appear until the early 200s. Yet the early church was remarkably effective. Researcher David Barrett reports that by the year 300 (or nine generations after Christ), 10.4% of the world was Christian.¹ The scriptures had been translated into ten languages, and more than 410,000, representing one in every 200 Believers from the time of Christ, had given their lives as martyrs for the faith. Somehow, all of this was accomplished without church sanctuaries, fellowship halls, and Sunday school classrooms….

As easy as it would have been for us to use our new building as an excuse to buy a new PA system, new comfortable chairs, a stage, and a lighting system, I felt compelled by God to not do any of that. With all of the needs in the neighborhoods and community around us, with homelessness and families that were struggling to just make ends meet, it seemed wrong to spend the resources God had given us on things that were so secondary and non-essential. So we decided to paint, knock down a few walls to open some space, buy a few more cheap metal chairs, and keep things the way they were— simple.

—Excerpt from Chapter 3 of Authentic Pursuit by Corey Trimble with Josh Brooker

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¹ Curtis, Josh, and Ken Barnett, “A Look at the Early Church.” Christianity.com. n.d. https://www.christianity.com/church/church-history/timeline/1-300/a-look-at-the-early-church-11629559.html.