MISSION AND MORTAR
May 18, 1995
5:30 p.m.

"Amazing Space: Chicago’s Churches and Synagogues"
Inspired Partnerships/Chicago Architecture Foundation
Presentation
John M. Buchanan

I wish to thank Inspired Partnerships for the very important
work you are doing and for this event, "Amazing Spaces, Chicago’s
Churches & Synagogues."

Inspired Partnerships is addressing a fundamental challenge,
which is becoming a crisis ~ how to maintain our wonderful spaces?
For us there are deeper problems, i.e., should we use shrinking
church resources to maintain buildings?

That discussion sets off a predictable debate between
Progressive and Conservative, Innovators and Traditionalists, and
sonetimes an unhealthy confrontation between ecclesiastical "haves"
and "have-nots."

Your work helps break that up and forces us to think anew.
Should we spend money on mission or mortar? The answer clearly is
"yes . is

It is a question about which we thought a lot at Fourth
Presbyterian Church recently. We are not typical ~-- our people are
still with us and form a hase from which we offer programs and
mission which generate interest. The neighborhood transitions on
North Michigan Avenue have increased population density and
economic strength.

Nevertheless, we've wrestled with the basic question ~-
shall we invest heavily in our building? The institutional
church is often accused of having an edifice complex --
particularly churches with grand buildings like ours.

Our architect, indeed, "made no small plans", and was never
altogether happy, I conclude, to be working for Presbyterians.
Ralph Adams Cram, I suspect, preferred the notion of empire -~
and qave us a lovely, but stunningly unPresbyterian assembly of
thrones, mitered bishops, and coats of arms which we love
aesthetically but, theologically, take with a grain of salt.

In a sense, the issue has always been important at Fourth
Presbyterian Church. On May 12, 1914, at the dedication of the
new building, the Chairman of the Building Committee, Thomas
Jones, addressed the congregation. He said some very important
things. I keep one paragraph of his speech close at hand for
easy reference. Mr. Jones said:

"Whether the expenditure which has been made
here ... shall prove justified, time alone
can answer. And the answer will be in terms
of service, the lives lived here, and the
spirit that shall go out from here and enter
into the life of the community ... and yet
there is within us a deep hope that these
structures, these walls, may have a silent
ministration of their own ... We trust that
not only members but passerby may be moved to
enter and ... find ... and awakened sense of
reverence of the presence and power of the
Unseen."

The current leadership of Fourth Presbyterian Church made a
decision, not unlike the decision Mr. Jones and his committee
made when they purchases a lot on the northern extension of Pine
Street, called Lincoln Parkway, at Delaware Place. We decided to
recommit ourselves, and our successors, to our neighborhood.

We often muse about how skeptical some must have been about
that original decision -- the neighborhood wasn’t much, rooming
houses, warehouses. What is now Michigan Avenue was an unpaved
road and there was no bridge over the river on Pine Street. on
the site where the minister’s home was built, The Manse, stood a
lively tavern: M. Donoghue’s North Shore Sample Room. And then
they hired the best architect they could find to build a gothic
cathedral.

We decided to stay put and reinvest in our building as a way
of reinvesting in our neighborhood and city. Contrary to rumor
heard around the neighborhood several years ago, there has never
been any consideration given to the possibility of our moving.

We did learn about the power of rumor, however, when shortly
after a television news broadcast included a clip of a local
preservationist standing in our courtyard pointing to our
building and solemnly observing that it would be a tragedy if
this church should succumb to the wrecking ball, shortly
thereafter, we heard the tour director on one of the double-

decker buses announce to his customers as they passed by -- "On
your right is the Fourth Presbyterian Church -- soon to be
leveled to make room for a highrise" -- we are not moving!

Why the investment? Why spend all that money? Part of the
answer is that the building needed it. The sanctuary was tired.
Serious deterioration has begun around the ceiling canvasses.
Water leaks over the years had eroded the stone, and from the
start the lighting wasn’t very good. There was an intentional
compromise in acoustics which favored the preachers over the
musicians. Leaded windows were sagging and were filthy, pews
were cracking, and there were 50 layers of wax on the terra cotta
Floor.

The rest of the building functioned -- well as a 1914 church
facility, complete with separate entrances for mens and
ladies‘club rooms. An educational addition was designed on the
realities and assumptions of the past, namely that religious
education has little to do with worship, therefore the same
people would not be using both facilities in the same morning.
It never occurred to Mr. Cram and his associates that someone
might bring a baby to church on Sunday, nor that anyone in a
wheelchair might attend. We had five or six levels depending on
how many times you had to go outside to get from one place to
another.

We needed a new church, inside, without disturbing the
exterior and that is what we are creating. That’s part of the
answer. Another part is that we respectfully conclude that
cities need churches: our neighborhood needs us.

In a wonderful book, "American Churches", Roger Kennedy,
former director of the Museum of American History at the
Smithsonian says,

"God is the mystery behind all mysteries.

How foolish to think that any one form of

building could be appropriate to all God’s
aspects:"

Why have religious buildings at all?, some might ask. Mr.
Kennedy responds:

... because among our needs is to seek the
mystery and to associate with others in that
search: [{P.19.]} Or as Mr. Jones put it in
1914; "We trust that not only members but
passerbys may be moved to enter and... find
-.- an awakened sense of the presence and
power of the Unseen."

I think we are a sign to our neighbors of that; a symbol,
dwarfed by the 900 building, the John Hancock Center, Water Tower
Place, that there is reality which is not circumscribed, or even
approached, by those massive symbols of human power and presence
any more than the tower of Babel was.

Interestingly, our spacial relationship to our neighbors has
inverted. Once we towered, as the Cathedrals tower over the
towns of Salisbury and Canterbury. But now, from the top of the
John Hancock we are tiny, a delicate jewel, dwarfed by its
powerful neighbor.

Yet the reminder is perhaps more relevant, more eloquent,
than ever.

"There is more than this", Cram’s building
says. "There is more to our humanity, our
human community, our human potential and
destiny than this."

"Thou hast made us restless until we find our
rest in thee." St. Augustine wrote 1500
years ago; "to seek the mystery and to
associate with others in that search," the
historian suggested. "to awaken a sense of
reverence to the power and presence of the
unseen; the Building Committee Chair echoed.

The third part of the answer is what the building does;

"whether the expenditure which has been made
here ... shall prove justified ... will be
answered in terms of service, the lives
lived, and the spirit that goes out with the
life of the community."

From the beginning, churches, at their best, have lived for
their communities. At our best, it is our defining
characteristics, and when we forget it; when our purpose is
ourselves: our adornment, beautification, maintenance, or even
our preservation, we become something less than the church, and
although something of the facade may continue for a very long
time, the church has, in fact, died.

And so we have tried to be very clear. We are building for
a future that carefully balances our needs as a community of
faith for education, worship and fellowship space, but also our
responsibility to serve our city.

The process actually began as the church took a long and
thoughtful look at itself 12 years ago, as the distinguished
career of my predecessor, Elam Davies, was coming to its
conclusion.

The church did a self-study and evaluated itself against its
identified goals and objectives. It asked its neighbors for
their opinion. It asked the city what it needed from the church.
It did basic market research, not in a philosophic vacuum, but in
the context of its primary and only purpose: to be a faithful
Presbyterian Church.

That careful process reaffirmed the key to Fourth
Presbyterian Church’s long and strong presence: that everything
else about the church, including its professional staff and its
building serves its mission. That mission, historically, has had
two foci, both equal: the congregation and the city, the world.

And so, the leaders concluded, our plans for the future
ought to be made always in the light of that -- and if the church
ever wanted to grow, it would need to remember that its primary
identity and source of strength is its mission.

That’s not necessarily a traditional approach to church
growth. Normally, you might try methods to induce people toa
join: better marketing, more aggressive sales. We decided to
provide more opportunities for service: to make sure we did the
other as well: did our homework on communicating our basic
messages. But to try to expand the opportunities for mission.

So we expanded our Tutoring Program until it began to burst
at the seams. And we got involved in Homeless Ministries:
helping to begin a shelter at the Christian Industrial League,
building homes with Habitat for Humanity, Cooking for the
Homeless on Sunday evenings and opening the church for Sunday
Night Suppers.

We sent people to Mexico, Nicaragua, and Northern Ireland,
launched an AIDS ministry, held Michigan Avenue Forums on topics
of community concern, and made our Arts Festival more visible,
dramatic, and sometimes controversial by commissioning artists to
wrap our trees, display modern sculptures in our Garth, and
invited David Brubeck to play jazz and Paul Winter to accompany
the music of whales and wolves in our sanctuary. And we added
opportunities for worship and study.

Part of what we have done in ten years is watch the
congregation grow at a time of very significant decline for
mainline churches. When it came time to look at our facilities,
again, we led with our mission: "What we need in order to be the
kind ef institution we intend to be." Or in our vocabulary, what
God calls us to be.

So when we finished restoring our worship space which more
than anything else defines who we are, we turned our attention to
mission.

We will have a Tutoring Center, space specifically designed
to accommodate 500 youngsters and their tutors, on 3 evenings per
week.

It will include a Computer Center, which is already one of the
many creative and popular aspects of the program. We will have
new space for community meetings. Something like 40 community
groups use our building: 12-step groups from AA, to Al Anon, to
"Why Me? Breast Cancer" to incest survivors, to mixed race
families. We will have space for large gatherings and small
gatherings. We will be accessible to wheelchairs and friendlier
to all of us who are less and less sure we can see the steps we
are descending.

And we will open a new Day Care Center in the Fall. In
addition to our fine Day School, the new Fourth Presbyterian
Church Children’s Center, a full Day Care Program will serve
about 50 children in a clean, safe, Loving environment close to
the workplace for families that need us.

And significantly, as we went to our members to find the
money to pay for this, we committed ourselves to give away the
first million dollars we raised.

We are doing that: contributing to the work of the
Presbyterian Church (U.S.A) here and abroad, and specifically to
two local projects: the renovation of lst Presbyterian at 64th
and Woodlawn, and Central City Housing Ventures.

We have learned, or perhaps relearned, two important
lessons:

1. For churches at least, mission is not something you do
after have taken care of everything else. Mission is
why we exist. And while not every religious
organization can afford elaborate community service
centers, each can serve its neighbors. That activity,
that mission, is at the heart of the matter and is a
source of strength and hope for the future.

2. And we have learned that mortar does matter. We know,
of course, that the church is people, not the building.
But we will not say that lightly again.

We have relearned the lesson to which you have devoted
yourselves, that buildings are not only important parts of their
communities -- "Amazing Spaces" without which our communities
would be immeasurably poorer -- they are also part of the way we
say who we are, and what we believe, and what we are all about.

There are sermons in stories, Mr. Shakespeare observed ...
and in bricks and mortar. Thank you very much for helping all of
us remember that important truth.