The design of our communities shapes how we interact with each other, love each other, and grow with each other. But who shapes those communities?
In a broad sense, all of us do. Our decisions of where and the way to live, learn, work, and worship collectively influence the market, ministry decisions, and what feels “right” and “normal.” But some professions—city planners, urban designers, architects, and real estate developers—take a bigger and more direct role in creating our cities and neighborhoods. And for a lot of Christians in these industries, faith guides their construction of spaces for community flourishing.
Where we live can echo each the creation and redemption yet to return (Rom. 8:18–25). These places can foster deep, lasting community in a fragmented world, 4 Christians in these industries told me, and the local church generally is a model of inviting, appealing design.
The pillars of excellent urban design—beauty, function, community constructing, accessibility—are greater than fads or human preferences. They’re a foretaste of the redeemed earth, a signpost pointing us toward a greater way of life. And it shouldn’t be lost on us, said Chris Elisara, chair of the Congress for New Urbanism Members Christian Caucus, that the world to return isn’t described as a garden or a quaint village but as a city (Rev. 22:3). “As we take part in kingdom constructing,” he told me, “it culminates with [that] city description in Revelation. And that’s where God dwells together with his people again.”
Accordingly, more mundane “kingdom constructing” through city planning and concrete design shouldn’t be thoughtless, out of touch, or chaotic. It should be fastidiously considered according to how we’re called to live together in Scripture. “We all fit together in creation in a way that’s particularly designed,” Elisara continued. “And so after we do our planning, our architecture, we’d like to bring an understanding of the way to do those in such a way that they’re commensurate with God’s vision of humanity.”
In A Theology of Cities, the late Tim Keller described that vision as “marked by God-shalom (Jeru-shalom)—his peace,” one concrete outworking of which is accessibility and the neighborliness it facilitates. Resilient community flourishes when the built environment encourages incidental encountering, easy gathering, and casual strolling—what architect and concrete designer Mel McGowan called facilitating “horizontal connection.”
“When I have a look at the instructions Christ gave us to like God and to like our neighbor, they’re each relational,” urban designer and architect Michael Watkins agreed. “And I’m certain we will design a built environment that permits us to be more relational.” In Watkins’s work, this implies creating neighborhoods and developments that encourage mixed uses, multigenerational living, and walkability.
It’s easier to get to know your neighbor once you see them of their front yard or in line on the nearby shop every day. It’s easier to befriend a close-by family once you see them on the park a couple of times each week. It’s easier for a church community group to live life together when members are actually—not only spiritually and emotionally—close.
But vertical connection matters too, McGowan said. Sara Joy Proppe, a former real estate developer and founding father of Proximity Project, similarly told me that she believes the built environment is a vital part “of what shapes us as human beings—God created it as a setting for our stories.”
Part of Proppe’s work helps churches use their property well. With her guidance, congregations have turned unused acreage into community gardens, dog parks, walking paths, and other small-scale public spaces for organic neighborhood life. “I actually care about strengthening the church to be very energetic stewards and have their place” in a community, Proppe said. “The built environment is such a conduit for living out the gospel. And I feel that’s a chunk that churches don’t see very clearly.”
Church design itself can have a crucial—if often unnoticed—impact on the lifetime of a city too. Historically, churches in denser, more urban neighborhoods were often built to be the anchor of a block or a neighborhood, sitting in a outstanding spot like a street corner or in front of a small public square. Neighborhood life, each secular and sacred, would revolve around and throughout the church. Physically orienting local life across the church was a secure bet because, as Elisara wrote with geography professor Chris Ives, churches are likely to be “stubbornly committed” to their communities and places.
McGowan has studied how churches and other houses of worship fit into the design of cities in centuries past, and he’s learned firsthand that modern, secular substitutes—big-box stores and big movie show complexes—simply should not have the identical effect. “We were literally attempting to recreate this sense of human-scale, European urbanity, however it was all the time sacred space that was the middle point” of those older communities, he explained. A Target or a theater might fill the space, however it won’t give local life the identical long-term anchor and transcendent meaning.
Of course, post-war America embraced a distinct approach to home and church design—one which was car-centric and suburb-oriented—and, today, relatively few of us live in a neighborhood built around church life. Our churches are likely to have large parking lots on even larger plots of land, and the huge spaces which can be useful on Sunday morning often sit empty (or barely used) the opposite six days of the week.
Those of us who aren’t in an urban planning field can take into consideration the way to put such spaces to good use. All Christians are called to “cultivate and keep” our world (Gen. 2:15, NASB), and that features our homes of worship and the spaces around them. Whether urban, suburban, or rural, how can we make our church properties more beautiful and useful? How can we make them places that reflect, in Elisara’s phrase, “what it means to be fully human as God made us to be”?
Greater density of individuals and uses is usually place to start. Denser spaces designed to be relational allow us to come across each the thrill of community and its more “sanctifying” elements: annoyances, selfishness, and sin. Churches with acreage or rooms which can be empty most of the time can explore using those spaces for child care, education, inexpensive housing, and even a complete “urban village.”
And beyond church property lines, Elisara advises Christians to actively “advocate for policies in [their] cities, towns, and neighborhoods which can be best for that city,” including safer streets, greater freedom in housing construction, and higher non-car transportation options. Advocating for these items will look different for Christians who live in additional suburban or rural environments, but our built environments shape our lives at any density—and even when we fail to spot, they shape our faith too.
Rabekah Henderson is a author covering faith, architecture, and the built world around us. She lives in Raleigh, North Carolina, and has been featured in Mere Orthodoxy, Common Good, and Dwell.
