As the worship guy at Community Church I spend a lot of time in our main worship space “the auditorium” and because of my role, a lot of that time is with an empty room. Usually I arrive at church around 7am to get setup, finalize last minute details and prepare for the arrival of the rest of our team. Most weekends I’m doing something until the 8am arrival of our band and volunteers on the tech team. This past weekend I was blessed by our awesome team and had less to do than my usual hour of prep time needed, so I had a few minutes to spare.
As I sat in the middle of an empty room, a room that serves most often as a place of worship, I thought about space. Specifically, in our space, without the people who make up the church, is it still “sacred space?”
In our particular venue, there isn’t much remarkable about the building we call our church.. Its mostly a big box with minimal decor, lots of technology and a good number of chairs.. What struck me as I sat in the quiet of the morning, just me and 500 chairs, was that our space is just that.. a space.
When I think about what makes the church come alive at Community Church, it isn’t the room we inhabit, it is the people that inhabit the room who make us a church.. While some may say, “no kidding” I think that there are places, maybe unique to a person that serve as sacred space in our lives..
I know personally, there are spots in parks, places in mountains, tables at coffee shops where significant moments in faith have happened and may continue to be vibrant places of encounter with God. In my mind, those places have some contention in my list of sacred spaces.
It never ceases to amaze me that often where we find our profound moments with God aren’t places you would consider particularly religious or spiritual, but they exist as markers along the way of our journey to remind us that places are sacred only in the measure by which God encounters us there.
Eric Barz 