What is a beautiful church building for?
What my bad sermons made bland, our sanctuary made sweet.
St. Peter’s First Community Church in Huntington, Indiana (Photos courtesy of Zen Hess)
In the summer of 1903, a newspaper headline boasted of what would become my congregation’s building: “Plans Are Here: They Show the German Reformed Church to Be Fine.” A year later, as the building neared completion, another newspaper article celebrated the new structure for “adding beauty and refinement to this part of the city.”
More than a hundred years later, college students from the local university came to shoot a short film in our building. When I opened one of the roller doors to our sanctuary, one student’s delight was audible: “Oh my.” The newspapers were right: this was an enduringly lovely structure.
But what is the purpose of all that beauty?
