Place inspiring worship, or unnecessary expense?

This is not a modest project. It is a $2 million building that will seat about 700 when it's done, quite an undertaking for a congregation that's only about half that size now. It's a roll of the dice (in a theological sense) that people will be attracted to this impressive new facility and want to be part of it.

They were giving tours of the partially completed building on Sunday, so my daughter and I went along. The outer structure is nearly complete, and the interior is coming along well enough to see what it will be like.

I have been in a couple of cathedrals, and what they do by their ancient forms and their stone solidity is to suggest eternity. The space between little you and the high vaulted roof proclaims: "God is greater than you. You will never be as great as God."

Our new church will not speak that message, exactly. It is too soft, too modern for that. Perhaps the message it suggests is that God is big but friendly, maybe a divine and less gross version of the BFG (big friendly giant) in Roald Dahl's tale.

Still, it was hard not to be awed by the diamond-shaped sanctuary. We have been worshipping in an adequate but plain box of a room. Even unfinished, the new sanctuary imbued a sense of space that, while not Chartres or Notre Dame, was impressive.

The dust and detritus of construction still lies everywhere. I worked on a construction crew when I was young, so I know what chaos is necessary for there eventually to be order.

Building a church is sort of our own miniature version of Genesis: "In the beginning, the earth was tohu wabohu" -- the nearly untranslatable Hebrew words suggesting the primeval turbulence that resisted the hands of God that bent and shaped it into something recognizable.

Presumably, God didn't have the kind of "oops" moments that our human workers have. I noticed that at one corner, a piece of heavy machinery had banged into the gypsum board, knocking the neat angle into a splayed and gashed form. It would have to be repaired or replaced. A minor problem amid the tens of thousands of details the architect and the construction foremen are managing.

I confess to mixed feelings about a project such as this. On the one hand, I'm enough of an esthete that I feel sanctuaries should be places of beauty. The psalmist speaks of the "beauty of holiness," and Catholics are famous for this. Their sanctuaries and cathedrals are a revel for the senses, and this can help to know God.

But my Protestant astringency intrudes and lectures me with a pointed finger that a log cabin on the prairie or a bare Quaker meeting house is just as good a place to meet the Lord. The words of Judas to Jesus -- "Should not this have been sold, and the money given to the poor?" -- don't seem so wrong sometimes.

It has always been a conundrum: Is the world a better place for the existence of St. Peter's Basilica? You could argue that the millions spent on it could have fed the poor of the world, but might not our grand places of worship supply us with necessary spiritual sustenance? Didn't Jesus say that we do not live by bread alone?

Or do we attach too much importance to our sanctuaries? One of the 16th-century Reformers scornfully referred to a mighty cathedral as "a heap of stones," and in a sense, that is all it is.

One way of looking at it is that there can be just as much pride in austerity as there is in opulence. If you worship in a blank cube and give away the money you're saving to the poor but your self-satisfaction prevents you from encountering God, then I somehow doubt God would be happy.

Well, most of us in my little congregation are hoping, I think, that all this is somehow going to be acceptable to God. There are plenty of preachers in our era of prosperity that would characterize a new sanctuary as a kind of fund-raising challenge. Or something that we deserve. If that's all it is, we'd be better off taking a bulldozer and a wrecking ball to it, no matter how grand it looks.

Jesus once remarked that if you have faith, even the size of a tiny mustard seed, you could command a mountain to be thrown into the sea and it would obey. We are not attempting anything so miraculous, but perhaps our collective faith will be enough to turn a vacant lot into a space where hymns will be sung and sermons preached and lives uplifted.

They say we might be able to move in by Christmas Eve. I'll keep you posted.

Cary McMullen is religion editor at The Ledger in Lakeland. Contact him at cary.mcmullen@theledger.com. The Ledger is a member of the New York Times Regional Newspapers.