The fire at the Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris France is the news story of the week. I would think that all Christians, whether they be Catholic or Protestant, would be saddened by the destruction of an active place of worship. This one is more than 800 years old. The website of the cathedral says that the building is “above all “the House of God and the abode of men” because this building is full of human and Christian experience. It also is a place of history and culture, and an architectural monument. Personally I have not been to Notre Dame, but I have visited other European cathedrals, and I can say that all of them are places of great beauty. For those of us who are Christian, we marvel that places like that were originally built to the glory of God. Damage or destruction to such a building is without a doubt a great loss. But it is a loss that needs to be seen in perspective.
As usual, the media coverage of an event of this nature is over the top. For days we have heard words like “tragedy”, “mourning”, “sorrow” and the solidarity of Catholics all over the world with vigils and special masses. One newspaper article that I read used the headline of a “global unifier”. Say what?
Yes, I admit it is all very sad. But something that the journalists and other writers don’t mention is the fact that a fire cannot destroy what a church really is. When Jesus said, I will build MY church, and the gates of Hades (hell) will not overcome it (Matthew 16:18), He was not talking about a building of wood, stone, or stained glass”. He was talking about a spiritual entity, comprised of redeemed human beings that lasts eternally. The Bible also uses the term “church” to describe a local assembly of believers, but never in the Bible does the term refer to a building. In fact, the early Christians met for centuries without ever having a building of their own. They met in large assemblies in public places, and in smaller groups in homes, and even in burial places as the catacombs when they needed to be in hiding.
Sometimes people refer to church buildings as “the House of God”, as if to say that God lives there. But Scripture tells us “The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by human hands.” (Acts 17:24) Certainly it is right and proper to construct buildings in which people meet to worship God, but when such buildings are not available, God can still be worshipped.
In fact I am reminded of another church fire in my home town of Kitchener. One day in 1963, as I was walking home from school at lunch time, the sky over Kitchener was black with smoke. When I got home, the radio was playing and mother told us that Benton Street Baptist Church was on fire. As we later found out, a 15 year old arsonist had entered the unlocked church, and lit a curtain which set the church ablaze. He returned to the scene of the fire to watch the church burn and was apprehended there. It turned out that he originally had intended to torch St. Matthew’s Lutheran Church, but painters working inside that church chased him away, so he walked a block to the Baptist church. The building burned to the ground and was a total loss, except for an addition that had been built in the 1950’s that still exists today. The fire was so intense that the fire department had to soak nearby buildings with water to protect them from the shower of sparks as the burning steeple came crashing down.
Did that stop the Benton Street congregation? In those days, the weekly Sunday 
evening service was broadcast live from the church over a radio station in Kitchener. After the fire (which happened on a Tuesday if I am correct), many people tuned their radios to the station on the following Sunday evening to see if Benton “is still there”. They were not disappointed: the Sunday evening service was on as usual, but the signal was coming from the auditorium of a local High School where the congregation worshipped until the new church was built on the same site as the old. A fire can destroy a building, but not a true church.
Which brings me back to the Notre Dame fire. While the rubble is still cooling off, the President of France declared that the cathedral will be re-built. And lo and behold, all kinds of money is turning up. Led by three of France’s wealthiest families, donations have started to pour in, so far more than 700 million dollars. Well and good some would say, but the question must also be asked, why these donations, which will not impoverish any of the benefactors, come as late as they do. Fine to re-build an historic monument or even a “sacred space” but what about supporting what a church really stands for – the spread of the Gospel, the support of the poor to mention only a few things. While France is predominately Roman Catholic country, only 11% of the people actually attend mass. (Here in Canada, our record is not much better with only 29% of the population attending worship in any church, Protestant or Catholic).
We seem to be more enamoured with beautiful buildings and cultural monuments, than we are devoted to the cause of Christianity that these buildings represent. In both North America and Europe, church buildings are emptying, and when the small congregations that inhabit them can no longer afford their upkeep, the buildings are either demolished or sold and re-purposed.
An example is a Lutheran church in the city of Hamburg in Horn, a working class district of the city. In 2002 the church was “deconsecrated” because only 20 people were in attendance in a space that had room for 500. The building stood vacant for almost 10 years, before a Muslim congregation purchased it. The church is in the process of being converted to a mosque. The outside will remain much the same, but the golden cross atop the steeple has been removed and replaced with Arabic lettering that spells “Allah”.
Suddenly there was an outcry by the public living near the structure. The former pastor of the congregation expressed the grief of people who live there, whose children had been baptized, confirmed, and married in the church. The local branch of the conservative Christian Democratic Union party called for the conversion to be halted. Another local pastor suggested that it would have been better simply to demolish the building. However the man heading up the church to mosque conversion said that the legacy of decline contributed to his ambivalence about moving into the church. “We wish that churches would become more full,” he said. “We don’t want to Islamize or take over churches.”
May those who have ears, hear.