Comments on: Is your worship space contributing to your mission?

By: Nick Wagner

Nick Wagner — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 23:46:35 +0000

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.

By: Nick Wagner

Nick Wagner — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 23:38:37 +0000

Joyce, you’re son is obvious the product of fine parenting! Is your font original with the church? What a wonderful statement about mission!

By: Joan

Joan — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 15:53:19 +0000

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!

By: Joyce Donahue

Joyce Donahue — Mon, 21 Jun 2010 12:34:59 +0000

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.