Archive for October, 2005

Slate has an interesting slide-show essay on the architecture of megachurches. The first slide of the presentation is about Joel Osteen’s Lakewood Church in Houston, and begins with this quote:

“Megachurch”—like “McMansion” or “big-box store”—is a disdainful put-down.

Interestingly enough, I believe this term was first promoted by large suburban churches themselves. Although those turned off by giant congregations may use this term demeaningly, most “megachurches” seem to wear the label with pride. But let’s click onto the next slide:

The modified exterior (at right) raises an important issue: The desire of congregations to make their place of worship a part of everyday life rather than a place apart is admirable, and one can sympathize with the wish to avoid the traditional ecclesiastical symbols that have been pretty much co-opted by mainstream religions. But having turned their backs on tradition, megachurches need to find appropriate architectural alternatives.

Ok, getting warmer. Remember though, we are talking about a church in Houston: a city of highways and big-boxes, rather than walkable human-scale neighborhoods. Clicking through a couple of slides, we land on this observation:

Since many Early American garden suburbs had beautiful Episcopalian churches, I don’t see any contradiction between transcendence and suburban life, but it’s true that most contemporary megachurches are resolutely secular in design. The 4,550-seat sanctuary—it’s actually called the Main Auditorium—of Willow Creek (at right) appears to have good sightlines, excellent audiovisual facilities, and comfortably wide aisles for moving around in. But inspiring it’s not. It’s the architectural equivalent of the three-piece business suit that most nondenominational pastors favor.

Ouch. What have we done? Are we merely reacting to market forces in the way we build churches? Are we focusing too much on making people feel comfortable and unoffended, rather than reaching out to the poor and needy? (And do we do the latter only often enough to clear our conscience?)

Michael Lewyn published a paper on the conflicts between laws set forth in the Torah and American suburban development.
The paper covers everything from environmental concerns, to caring for the poor, to avoiding work on the Sabbath.

Although the paper is a 26 page PDF, about 18 of these are citations, leaving the rest as a fairly quick read.

An interesting Post-Gazette article about a couple who renovated a barn into a home. You would think that a building like this needs a lot of energy for heating and cooling, but the older parts of the barn evidently act as extra insulation and shielding.

Salon recently published a good article on unschooling. Instead of following the typical homeschooling article formula (recently parodied by The Onion), Salon digs deeper into the history of alternative education.
This article highlights the pre-evangelical sweep of the movement, before most people had even heard of homeschooling. These people were less concerned with curriculum than creating a flexible learning environment. Salon effecively explores the obstacles that can hamper this effort.

As thorough as the article is, I feel that the difference between homeschooling and unschooling is a little exaggerated. From my personal experience and through the observation of others, homeschooling and unschooling are more like points on a scale, rather than odd relatives. Even the most structured homeschoolers speak fondly of flexibility and the ability to take advantage of unique opportunities. Some families use different methods for each child and each stage of education. Homeschooled teens frequently direct their own learning, yet wouldn’t necessarily call themselves unschoolers.

Despite some slight sensationalism, this article is definitely worth reading for anyone involved with or interested in alternative education.

A map on pop vs. soda (and yes, Coke), sorted by country/parish/borough/whatever yours is called.

The heavily-advertised DC Festival with Luis Palau will be held this weekend. It looks like they could still use some volunteers with setting up, collecting canned food, tearing down, etc… so if you can give a few hours (and live here), sign up.

In one week, I’ll be giving a presentation on Joomla component development. The meeting is free and open to the public.

Where else can you get a thorough, multi-paged explanation of the phrase jump the shark?

I used to poke fun at foreman grills as they would show you how you could butter things for flavor and save on so much fat, since it all slides off into the tray at the bottom. However, I have found them to be quite handy for a few things.
The fat-reducing feature of the grill really doesn’t grab me as much as the fast cooking does. I cook chicken breasts on this thing and then chop them up for chicken salad sandwiches so I don’t have to dish out $5 for Subway everyday. Throw in some celery, olives, pickles, seasoned salts, mayo, etc… works out pretty well.

Off to eat some defintely not fat-reduced chicken and sausage gumbo.

A friend of mine started talking about a plaza he encountered comprising of chain-stores arranged to look like a small downtown, but surrounded by a huge surface parking lot. My a portion of my reply follows…

Yeah, this is a problem with people who think they’re “new urbanists” when they’re really not. We kinda have the “fake downtown” going on over at Clarendon, one block away from the “real” downtown. There’s a line of Vietnamese/Asian stores and restaurants on the real side and about half of them are closed. I’ve got this awful feeling in the pit of my stomach that it will all be condos this time next year (ok, I’m beginning to sound like a “scene kid“). At least the “lifestyle center” there is integrated with the rest of the sidewalk/street network and was partially built out of an old Sears parking lot.