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Wednesday, February 20, 2002

Just as many northern suburbs have seen their populations mushroom over the past decade, so have the area's churches. Bigger congregations mean bigger buildings, bigger parking lots and bigger Sunday morning traffic jams.

All those "biggers" could also mean our churches are poised to become big, bad neighbors.

Civic planners, environmentalists and tightwads like me often bemoan the wastefulness of modern suburban life. "Bedroom communities" got their name because they consist of spacious homes used by their owners for little more than sleeping; nobody's there to enjoy or use or even occupy the neighborhood during the day.

Today's "megachurches" are the civic equivalent of bedroom communities. They devour enormous acreage to build structures that stand unused most of the week. They fell forests to make pews warmed by our backsides only on Sundays. They waste space and money -- unless church leaders plan otherwise.

In upcoming months, several New North congregations have the opportunity to literally build more responsible roles for themselves in their neighborhoods. By planning as many uses for their new buildings as staff and volunteers can make function, the churches could end up creating new ministries to meet real needs in the New North -- and give the community a lesson in good stewardship at the same time.

Earlier this month, Victory Christian Fellowship leaders gave Cranberry officials drawings of a proposed auditorium that would eventually seat 5,000, to be built on a 65-acre site where Bear Run Road meets Route 19.

Leaders of Northway Christian Community, whose members currently worship in a 1,300-seat auditorium on Route 19 in Wexford, have begun discussions with Pine officials about building a new auditorium to seat 4,000.

The New Community Church, which meets in the 900-seat auditorium of Marshall Middle School, is still working with Pine officials tobegin work on an auditorium-style sanctuary at the intersection of Route 910 and Pearce Mill Road.

Those are just the nondenominational Christian churches, and not an exhaustive list at that. A Mormon congregation and the Roman Catholic Diocese of Pittsburgh are also planning new buildings to keep up with the growth of their flocks.

There may be no way around the limited use of vast sanctuaries designed to seat an entire congregation at one time, and viewed from a broader perspective, there may be no need to. I don't begrudge a little extra square footage devoted solely to collective worship of the Creator of the Universe. Mere practical concerns must bow to a greater calling.

It would be even better if those new sanctuaries evoked a beauty appropriate to their purpose. New church buildings often look like temples to Mammon, interchangeable with the corporate headquarters they're built next to. Their aesthetic barrenness, though, might make them more appropriate for other uses, such as high school graduations. No pesky crosses or stained glass to offend the secular purists.

The rest of the church campuses are already ideal for civic multitasking. Classrooms and nurseries that sit vacant during the week could be schoolrooms and day care centers meeting the needs of nearby working mothers. Kitchens that accommodate church banquets and breakfasts could someday be nonprofit businesses and job-training programs. Church gymnasiums and classrooms could provide richly varied after-school programs.

And the congregations themselves are populated by an untapped resource: older members whose children are grown, whose careers are winding down and whose wealth of experience could nurture the neighborhood's youngsters.

Though still in the early stages, a couple of the churches considering new building programs are thinking hard about how they interact with those around them. At Northway Christian Community, many rooms are already used during the week by an independent Christian school.

Victory Christian Fellowship hopes to sell about 25 of its 65 acres to businesses interested in building offices and sharing a 1,400-space parking lot with the church. Northway is considering a similar plan. Such wise use of one of America's uglier contributions to world culture -- the parking lot -- should be applauded.

Perhaps these churches could make their vast auditoriums available to the business community for conferences and seminars. Security issues and insurance costs would be more than offset by the doors opened to spiritual ministry among the region's corporate warriors.

Pittsburgh's urban churches have already pioneered the multi-use path. With no land to expand upon, they've had to think differently about how to use the resources they do have. And as so many of the affluent have moved out to the suburbs, human needs that only a church can meet have been laid bare in older city neighborhoods.

Those needs exist in the suburbs as well. They're just masked by a layer of affluence. Our suburban churches could help individuals and families by transforming the programs they provide to a full-building, round-the-clock schedule.

In the process they could transform the way we think of what a church really is -- not a building but a group of people with a shared purpose. Instead of imitating the sprawling, greedy, gas-guzzling, resource-wasting parts of our materialist culture, our churches could be "in the world but not of it."

Ruth Ann Baker can be reached at rabaker@post-gazette.com.