buildings...

yesterday i was on the bus traveling through the rural east of Singapore and i was curiously surveying the environment (potential for future living haha). while the bus was parked at a red light, i saw this huge community centre building that looked pretty nice and my mind began to run through the kinds of activities there that are actually feasibly doable even though i always associate them with aunties and i thought maybe i should try them. anw the point is, when the bus began to move pass the building, (to my surprise) i realized that it was actually a church building! with a cross that i couldn't have seen from the red light spot.

anw my thought is this! i thought about most of the church buildings that i've seen in Singapore. they actually look religiously void, save for the cross, the name of the church, and the gazillion banners that hang around its premises. even then, they typically look just like any other public building that you see around. there isn't the aura of the Christ or anything like those crazy medieval church architectures you see in European countries. well, one point for secularism!
but why do church buildings in singapore look like that while buddhist temples and mosques and hindu temples look SO religious? they even have all their gods displayed on their roofs! it's like when you walk past them you really know you're treading some serious religious ground. while people like me can actually mistake a church for a community centre.

well.. it's not that it's a totally bad thing. even though there's absolutely no distinctiveness and the churches (that do not use colonial church buildings) have really blended into the modern sanitized secular environment (sometimes really state of the art postmodern kind), i guess it subconsciously gives the idea that the religion is not an out-of-our-world thing but something that is real and relevant to everyday life today. and maybe looking like a community centre isn't so bad because the church does kinda function like one except that they have Christ.

but can you imagine if churches today have their distinctive form of architecture? it doesn't have to be grand with ancient-looking adornments or expensive.. just something more than looking like any other thing on the street. the church is supposed to be special!