Ask any pastor what his congregation should be, and he will describe a body that is active and mutual, with every member ministering. Then walk into his building. The rows of seats all face one direction, toward a raised platform and a lectern. The lighting is on the front and dim in the seats, and sound is amplified from the stage and absorbed by the crowd.

The room says something different from the sermon. And the room wins.

What a room does

For decades researchers in environmental psychology have found, in every setting they study, that the physical arrangement of a space predicts what people do in it better than their personalities do. Put the same people in a different room and they behave differently. Put different people in the same room and they behave the same.

The mechanism is that a room affords certain actions and forbids others. Rows facing forward afford watching and forbid conversation, since you would have to turn around, and the person behind you is looking past you. A platform affords one speaker and forbids many. Fixed seating keeps people where they are and forbids gathering, while distance between seats affords privacy and forbids touch.

Researchers who studied hospital wards found that arranging chairs in rows along walls produced patients who sat in silence, while arranging them in small circles around tables produced conversation, with the same patients in the same ward, within days. They named the two kinds of space sociofugal (driving people apart) and sociopetal (drawing them together). Nearly every church building ever constructed is sociofugal by design.

And the effect isn't neutral. In a large room facing forward, a person becomes anonymous. Anonymity reduces personal responsibility; it's why crowds behave differently from individuals. The larger the audience, the less any member of it feels obligated to act, speak, or care. The room manufactures passivity, and then the passivity is blamed on the people.

Where the early church met, and why it matters

The New Testament names the places where the church actually gathered.

And they, continuing daily with one accord in the temple, and breaking bread from house to house, did eat their meat with gladness and singleness of heart. (Acts 2:46)

Greet Priscilla and Aquila my helpers in Christ Jesus... Likewise greet the church that is in their house. (Romans 16:3-5)

Aquila and Priscilla salute you much in the Lord, with the church that is in their house. (1 Corinthians 16:19)

Salute the brethren which are in Laodicea, and Nymphas, and the church which is in his house. (Colossians 4:15)

And to our beloved Apphia, and Archippus our fellowsoldier, and to the church in thy house. (Philemon 2)

The church in the house appears five times, in four letters, across the Mediterranean. That lasted far longer than a phase, since it was the form for roughly the first three centuries. Nobody built a church building until the third century; the earliest one found, at Dura-Europos, is a private house with one wall knocked through, dating from seventy years before Constantine.

The house afforded a table, so the meal could be shared, and faces in a circle, so every one of you could speak. It was small enough that all may learn, and all may be comforted (1 Corinthians 14:31), and close enough that burdens could be known. The rich members could have rented halls. The church chose the house because it was the room in which the design could be obeyed.

Paul's problem was too many speakers

Read 1 Corinthians 14 with the room in mind. Paul is regulating an assembly.

How is it then, brethren? when ye come together, every one of you hath a psalm, hath a doctrine, hath a tongue, hath a revelation, hath an interpretation. Let all things be done unto edifying. If any man speak in an unknown tongue, let it be by two, or at the most by three, and that by course; and let one interpret... Let the prophets speak two or three, and let the other judge. (1 Corinthians 14:26-29)

His problem is too many participating, because everyone has something. He has to impose turn-taking (two or three, by course, one at a time). That regulation is only necessary in a room where participation is the norm.

The modern church has the opposite problem. It doesn't need Paul's rules, because the room already enforces silence. No one has to say "two or three" when the architecture guarantees one.

The words let the other judge mean the assembly weighs what's said. That takes a room where the hearers can respond as participants. In a room facing forward the hearers are an audience, and judgment is structurally impossible there; you can only receive.

The temple objection

Someone will object that the early church also met in the temple, that Solomon built a house for God, and that Scripture therefore sanctions the sacred building.

The temple was real, and the early Jerusalem church used its courts. But Stephen's last sermon, the one that got him killed, ends with Howbeit the most High dwelleth not in temples made with hands (Acts 7:48). Paul says it again to the Athenians: God that made the world and all things therein... dwelleth not in temples made with hands (Acts 17:24). And Peter reassigns the temple's function to the people: Ye also, as lively stones, are built up a spiritual house (1 Peter 2:5).

The New Testament relocates the temple without forbidding buildings. The people are the house of God. A building, when it's used, is justified by what it does for the people and their neighbors. Calling it a sacred place where God is met doesn't justify it.

Nothing is wrong with a church having a building. The trouble is that from the Roman basilica onward church buildings were designed as auditoriums, and an auditorium teaches its occupants to be an audience, whatever the preacher says about being a body.

The Eutychus test

One scene in Acts shows what a New Testament gathering actually felt like.

And upon the first day of the week, when the disciples came together to break bread, Paul preached unto them, ready to depart on the morrow; and continued his speech until midnight. And there were many lights in the upper chamber, where they were gathered together. And there sat in a window a certain young man named Eutychus. (Acts 20:7-9)

They meet in an upper room for a meal, late at night after work, with the lamps lit. A young man sits in a window because the room is full. Paul talks for hours because there's time, and nobody leaves, because a household with a guest behaves differently from an audience with a program.

Eutychus falls, and is raised, and then, when he therefore was come up again, and had broken bread, and eaten, and talked a long while, even till break of day, so he departed (20:11). They ate again and talked till dawn.

Try to imagine that in a modern sanctuary. The room won't let you.

What can be changed

Not everything can be changed, and not all at once. Most congregations own a building that was designed for an audience and isn't going to be demolished.

But the room isn't the only variable. A congregation can decide where formation happens. It can treat the auditorium as the place of public teaching and the house as the place of the one-anothers, following the pattern of Acts 2:46, the temple and house to house. Chairs can go in circles in the rooms it controls, the meal can be held, and every member can be placed in a room, weekly, where every one of you is possible.

What it can't do is preach the body from a platform to an auditorium and expect the room to lose. The room doesn't lose. Every week it teaches its own lesson, which is to sit, watch, receive and leave.

So ask of your congregation: in what room does a member speak? In what room is he known? In what room can he confess, admonish, or bring a psalm? If there's no such room, the design has been architecturally prevented, and the recovery begins by building one. You won't need bricks for it, just a table and six chairs.