I’ve traveled far and wide the past few days (only Cordelia and Mark Jones care) — to Samford University for a conference on teaching Augustine in the Great Books curriculum, to Trinity PCA in Montgomery, Alabama, to teach Sunday school on Christianity and politics, and now to Philadelphia for Christian Education Committee meetings for the OPC. In examining facilities, I am aware of a great disparity among Southern Baptists, the PCA, and Orthodox Presbyterians.
Samford is a lovely campus, leafy, hilly, substantial quads, uniform architecture. It is not Baylor or Furman, but it is a formidable institution. The OPC has no college. Covenant College has its moments, but it would come in a few notches in University Architecture and Physical Plant Digest behind Samford. The OPC has no college.
Trinity PCA in Montgomery is sumptuous. I spoke in a room that any luxury hotel would be glad to have as a ballroom. Church offices were large, numerous, and well appointed. It makes the OPC’s headquarters look like a junior high school compared to College Hall at the University of Pennsylvania.
And yet, to compare the OPC’s headquarters to one of the PCA’s tall-steeple churches is unfair. I’ve not been to the PCA’s headquarters, but I suspect that First Church, Jackson, or Briarwood in Birmingham, or First Church Macon, Georgia would also make the PCA’s offices look like an OPC operation. The real comparison is between headquarters and headquarters, and congregation and congregation.
And that is how you know you’re a Protestant. Chances are that all of our wealthiest and most numerous congregations have better facilities than the central denominational offices.
But can any diocese or archbishop’s residence among the Roman Catholic bishops compare with Vatican City? I’m sure Milan or Munich have magnificent facilities. But like the Vatican. In Roman Catholicism you have a clear center and periphery. Among Protestants, localism prevails and the center does not measure up (even if it holds in other ways).
Old Life 