Church building is not just a one-time physical undertaking; it is an ongoing spiritual activity. It does not primarily involve collecting money, drawing up plans, and adding brick to brick, or even member to member, though on the surface one will see these things occurring. It is more correct to look upon it as the development of an idea in consciousness than as an accretive project—a spiritual Church-revealing event rather than a material church-construction program.
In fact, Church in its true, God-created nature exists in Mind. It does not have to be built, developed, or rebuilt; it is eternally complete. Scientifically understood, Church is the total structure of God's creation— the divine idea, Deity's manifestation, in which all is spiritual, perfectly formed, governed in absolute harmony, with every individual expression of God, Soul, included within its wholeness. Nothing created by divine Principle is outside the true, spiritual Church as it exists in God, Truth. Church is intact, forever perfect, "a building of God, an house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens."II Cor. 5:1;
A humanly conceived church-building or development program will prosper in proportion to the increasing vision of the true, permanent, spiritual structure that is Church, glimpsed by the members involved —however few or many there may be. It will progress to the degree that these members' understanding of and faith in the existence of Church as an eternally complete idea become more substantial. It will take harmonious form as they more constantly demonstrate the presence of the harmony of divine Principle through healing, and more sturdily express in their lives the Truth and Love that constitute the actual substance of Church. And the continuing growth and well-being of the humanly established church will be assured as the members continue to grow in their understanding and demonstration of Truth.
