Our message and doctrines as based on the Bible are the most consistent and reason able of any denomination's. It is because we hold to the pure teaching of Scripture that we are a peculiar people. There is no virtue in trying to do things just for the sake of seeming queer. It is not exactly necessary to expect to find modernism preached from the pulpit of a modernistic church building, but it does seem that a church of conservative lines goes better with our reasonable and consistent Bible teaching. A church ought to express the unchanging nature of the Christian faith—our faith.
A church building should be more than a place to assemble and be protected from the weather while the Word is expounded. It should be so designed that it invites dignity and reverence and appeals to man's desire to worship, a place where one naturally will remove his hat and lower his voice as he enters. As a sister recently said, "You feel as if you are in a church." However large or small it may be, the same amount of materials can be made into a place of beauty just as well as into a boxlike meeting hall. There can be reverent, worshipful beauty and dignity in harmonious simplicity.
The church site should be prayerfully selected and well orientated as to the direction of prevailing wind and rain or snow, proper ventilation, and the right lighting effect. The lot should drain well and slope from the front. A church situated on a hill may be beautiful, but for the elderly and feeble it may be difficult or even impossible for them to attend. A freezing climate would add hazards. A large inside lot outweighs the advantages of a small corner lot. The site should not be too close to the railways or business district or on a trunk highway. People from all classes of society will go to a church in the better part of town. A church properly located and well-designed needs no more than one or at the most two steps at the entrance.
The interior of a church should be planned first. The exterior can be made to fit. But it should look like a church. On passing no one should mistake it for something else than a church. However small or large, our churches can be so well designed that even those most prejudiced to our beliefs will privately admit that our buildings are beautiful and look like churches. It should again be remembered that with proper planning and study the same materials can be designed into something beautiful just as well as a nondescript meeting hall. Example: In a Western city our members were often asked where their church was, and when the answer was given, the invariable reply was, "I didn't know that was a church." Later they sold it and built a modest little church on Gothic lines. Result: Everyone knows it is the Seventh-day Adventist church, and every minister who has preached in it has been impressed with the degree of reverence now shown by the congregation. Protestant building committees have come for hundreds of miles to see the new church and to get ideas. Hundreds of people have visited the services who would never have crossed the threshold of the old nondescript meetinghouse. The members have no hesitancy now about inviting their non-Adventist friends to church services. The new building looks like a church without and within.
Architects are highly trained men, and their skill is rightfully admired and respected. They are of necessity trained in modernistic designing, the same as an engineer must be trained in up-to-date mechanics. An architect especially trained in ecclesiastical architecture is the only one who should be employed in planning a church. Architects usually design the style that the committee wants.
Churches of the older Protestant denominations for the most part follow so strikingly the dimensions and proportions given by the Most High for Solomon's Temple that we might do well to lay aside prejudice and design our churches somewhat on the traditional lines of these older faiths. They have preserved those appointments that make for dignity and reverence, which appeal to man's instinct to worship his Maker. There seems to be rather a strong tendency in some Seventh-day Adventist committees for the modernistic, or so-called contemporary, architecture, forgetting that the modernistic of today is definitely out of date tomorrow. One can observe the churches erected about the turn of the century. Those built on traditional lines are still in good taste and recognized as the "churchiest" churches in the community. Some of the congregations who went in for the modern fad of that day are trying now to remodel into the traditional, others are trying to sell, and still others are living with the mistakes of that period. The conservative style of architecture has lived through centuries and promises to remain always in good taste. Such churches look like churches inside and out. There is beauty in harmonious simplicity.
