Is your worship space contributing to your mission?
“Good architecture should help a company with its mission.”
You might expect that line to have appeared in Architectural Digest and to have been spoken by someone like famous designer Cesar Pelli. In fact, it appeared in the June 2010 issue of Inc., and it was Robert Wood Johnson IV—the owner of the New York Jets football team—who said it. He said it from his office in the Jets’ new “120,000-square-foot shrine to athletic and corporate excellence.”
When I read the words like “mission” and “shrine,” and my little Catholic heart starts to perk up. Aren’t we the people who do mission? Don’t we have the corner on the shrine market? I re-read the article a little more closely.
When Johnson bought the Jets in 2000, they were clearly a second-class team in a first-class town. He did a lot of things you’d expect someone to do who wants to win football games. He hired a feisty new head coach. He drafted a hot young rookie quarterback. But Johnson considers the biggest contributor to the Jets recent success to be the “shrine” where all the employees work. How does his company headquarters help support the Jets’ mission?
A mission to win
The mission is clear: Win football games. So right in the front lobby, through which every employee, including the players, have to enter stands the Jets’ only Super Bowl trophy (from 1969). It is a not-subtle reminder of the team’s legacy and also a challenge for their future.
Next, the facility includes an enclosed, football-field-size fieldhouse with a 95 foot clearance to allow for punting practice. Most of the offices in the building have an outer glass wall that looks out over the four outdoor practice fields. The primary field faces the same solar direction as the Jets’ home stadium, and the office building surrounds it on three sides to mimic the effects of playing in the stadium.
Add to that many dozens of TVs throughout the facility all broadcasting ESPN or the NFL Football Network.
You cannot work in this place and not get the point. But just in case anyone has missed it, all the employees are given free season passes to the Jets games.
Questions for parish design
All this has me wondering, do we put the same kind of passion and focus into building or renovating our worship spaces?
- When people walk in the front door, is there something akin to the Jets’ Super Bowl trophy that immediately communicates our mission?
- Is the space generous enough to accommodate everything we have to do in our liturgies? Perhaps we don’t need 120,000 square feet, but do we have space for catechumenate dismissal, child care, hospitality before and after Mass, and other Sunday activities?
- Is the worship space built to accommodate the lesser-used, but still vital parish rituals, in the same way the Jets have accommodated their punters? In other words, can rituals like the Rite of Acceptance or Easter Vigil be celebrated in a way that looks like the space was designed for these events as well as Sunday Mass?
- As worshipers assemble for Mass, find their pews, and prepare to celebrate, what do they see? Just as the Jets employees are looking out their windows at their mission every day, what is it in our worship spaces that visually remind worshipers of our mission?
- Finally, is what we do in our worship spaces so compelling that people feel blessed to be there—just as the lucky season ticket holders do in the Jets organization?
Good architecture should help a company with its mission. It should also help Catholic parishes with theirs.
What is your worship space like? In what ways does it support your parish mission? Please send your pictures and your comments.
Tags: review
What an interesting question! Our 160-year-old inner-city Gothic-style building was renovated in the late ’90′s. While it has many limitations (not enough space but too landlocked to do anything about it, typical platform in front and fixed pews) we DO have something when you first walk in that speaks volumes about the mission – a great baptismal font just inside the main entrance to the worship space. This font has a small, octagonal upper pool that cascades into a larger coffin-shaped lower one where we do our immersion baptisms. As my oldest son said as a teen when he first saw it, this font speaks about “dying to old life, rising to new life.” This is indeed who we are – and the architecture speaks.
You make some very good points.
I think the lack of faith in today’s Catholics (the drop in Mass attendence, the people who don’t believe in the Real Presence, etc) can be linked to the fact that our churches don’t look like churches. I don’t want to worship God in a spaceship or a barn, and I’m not drawn closer to him when I see abstract art that can’t catechize me because I can’t even tell what it is! : )
Denis McNamara is doing incredible work in this field. Bring back the “worship spaces” —churches— that look like churches. Once our churches catechize us on the Real Presence, we’ll begin to see people remember what liturgy is all about in the first place!
Unfortunately, I’ve been to too many churches that look like they should be the Jets football stadium! haha!
Joyce, you’re son is obvious the product of fine parenting! Is your font original with the church? What a wonderful statement about mission!
Hi Joan. Wow, it sounds like you’ve experienced liturgy in some pretty bad worship spaces. My experience is in mostly mediocre worship spaces. Most have the traditional layout and the traditional statues the traditional placement of the tabernacle and so on. I suppose they “look” like churches. But everything feels like it came from a catalog and nothing speaks about the mission of the particular parish.