What do they say?
November 14, 2008 (Friday)
Here’s the church, and here’s the steeple
Open the door and see all the people.
Here’s the parson going upstairs,
And here he is saying his prayers.
I recently snapped this picture of our refurbished steeple at Timbergrove Baptist Church in Houston.
People generally like steeples on churches. The Vickery Baptist Church I pastored in Dallas has an eighty-five feet high gold anodized aluminum steeple. The Northside Baptist Church of Lampasas where I pastored years ago had no steeple, so we built one. When the 1959 worship center at Rockport’s First Baptist Church was being built, members of the congregation realized it had no steeple, so they voted to add one to the building. Today, even though the buildings have been sold and are being used for other purposes, that steeple still sits atop a small tower at the main entrance. The new owner wants it to remain even though the church no longer is there.
Have you ever thought of the significance of steeples? Is a steeple merely a pretty decoration on top of a building to designate it a church building? Or does it have a meaning all its own?Here is a steeple that I first saw as our vacationing family drove through Port Gibson, Mississippi. I had never heard anything about it, so when we saw it we were surprised and delighted. This steeple tells us what all the other steeples are saying. Yes, steeples say to passers by: “This church is here to point you to God!”