Many years ago, I developed an interest in church architecture that led me to travel to various cities to take pictures of churches. I'm not talking about famous churches like Notre Dame in Paris or Winchester Cathedral in Winchester, England, or even my own country's National Cathedral in Washington, D. C. I'm talking about Elizabeth, New Jersey; Providence, Rhode Island; and ... well, you get the picture.
I ended up with hundreds of photos from small and large cities. But I got more than that. As I looked at churches of all shapes and sizes, I observed at least two common elements.
The first is that each structure seemed designed to forward the worship of God in the way that the particular denomination visualized God to be. As I considered this, I realized that the structure of worship wasn't formed by the building, but by the believers. Because the worship structure was mental, they didn't actually need the building to experience God's presence; the building just reflected that structure.
