I have never been one for church building projects. I am willing to be pragmatic about it: sometimes one does run out of room, and if the resources invested in the building will ultimately yield more fruit for the kingdom than another allocation of those resources, then by all means it is worthwhile. But where building programs simply function to measure a leader’s status (what has sometimes been facetiously labeled an “edifice complex”), the motivation deserves further scrutiny.
I also grant that buildings can bring God glory, for those with eyes to see it. Whether we examine ancient pyramids, medieval cathedrals or modern skyscrapers, such engineering feats warrant our praise of the God who created human beings with such ingenuity. As I marvel at God’s handiwork in nature, I wonder marvel at his glory displayed in human designs. When we look at remains from the ancient world, we imagine the splendor of civilizations of Egypt, Rome, and the like.
While I thank God for modern engineers, however, some ancient building projects also remind me of the impoverished workers and slaves by whose labor such structures were erected at the behest of elites. Building projects such as Babel’s ziggurat (Gen 11:4) or the pyramids also reflect human pride or false religious beliefs. Earthly splendor may outlast its contributors, but ultimately it remains destined for oblivion. From God’s perspective, the eternal destiny of the laborers counts far more heavily than the bricks that may have outlived them.
Jesus’s disciples were impressed with the splendor of Jerusalem’s temple (Mark 13:1), and for good reason. Jerusalem’s temple for the one true God dwarfed even Ephesus’s temple of Artemis temple, or Athens’ Parthenon. It was the greatest temple of the ancient world, and had it survived, it would surely draw more visitors today than does the Parthenon (which, I can attest as one who has visited there, does draw many visitors). It was undoubtedly the most magnificent structure to which Jesus’s Galilean disciples had been exposed.
But God’s standards are not ours. After the disciples pointed Jesus’s attention to the temple complex’s various buildings (Matt 24:1) and massive masonry (Mark 13:1; most stones weighed many tons), Jesus pointed out the temple’s impending fate. “Not one stone will be left on another” (Matt 24:2; Mark 13:2). Jesus may have used some hyperbole, but within a generation (cf. Matt 23:36; 24:34), in A.D. 70, this splendid temple lay in ruins. In Jesus’s day, the temple was big business, and some of its top leaders were apparently more consumed with the business side of the temple than its spiritual side (21:13). Its priesthood scrupulously attended to its ritual functions, but they also forgot that they were mere tenants (Matt 21:33-36). Unwilling to hand over authority to God’s Son, they rejected him (21:37-39; 23:31-36). Their house would thus be left desolate (23:38; 24:15).
Jesus invested instead in a different building. When Peter confessed Jesus’s identity as the Messiah, the Lord announced: “On this rock I will build my church” (16:18). In the OT, God spoke of “building” his people (or, in times of judgment, tearing them down). What lasts forever is not the physical building in which the church meets. In the New Testament, the church itself—people—are God’s temple. And God continues to build his house through the confession of who Jesus is.
Church buildings are resources, means to an end. What matters more is making disciples who can endure through testing, followers of Jesus who will last forever. That’s why the great commission involves both evangelism and teaching (28:19-20). Our greatest investments should be not in what the world sees and values, but in what God sees and values—the lives of his people.
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