Jul 11 2008
Is this too much?
Grace Community Church is raising money to build two enormous crosses that its pastor says will mark the entrances to Houston on Interstate 45. The crosses will likely rank among the largest in the world.
Counting their bases, the crosses would reach up to 200 feet. Each would dwarf I-45’s current symbol of Texas largeness. “Big Sam” Houston, the colossal statue in Huntsville, stands 77 feet tall with its base.
The symbols of Christianity would tower over Grace’s freeway-hugging campuses: the south campus at Dixie Farm Road, and the new north campus just south of The Woodlands. Combined, they serve 12,000 members.
Part building, part sculpture, each cross would include a “prayer center” about 40 feet off the ground — a “Space Needle-type place,” Pastor Steve Riggle said — where Christians from all over Houston could come to pray for the city’s well-being.
An openwork globe 60 feet in diameter, with latitude and longitude lines crisscrossing the continents, would top the prayer center. The bottom of the cross would be visible through the globe.
Riggle sees the crosses as a symbolic stand against moral decay. “The freeways are littered with sexually oriented businesses,” he said. “I’d rather see something that stands for hope, life and faith.”
He hopes that other churches follow Grace’s lead. “What if there was one of these at every entrance to the city?” he asks on a YouTube video. “You talk about marking our city for God!”
“Marking Our City” billboards show a giant cross looming over the Houston skyline, and promise a 150-foot cross is “coming soon.” But the pastor hopes both structures will be 200 feet tall, roughly the height of a 20-story building. The Federal Aviation Administration, he said, may limit the south campus’s cross to 150 feet because it’s near Ellington Field.
The cross on Grace’s billboards bears a striking likeness to one often hailed as the world’s largest: the “Cross at the Crossroads” in Effingham, Ill. Completed in 2001, the white metal structure is 198 feet tall and measures 113 feet at its crossbar. It cost $1 million.
Read about it here.
[From me]
I’m curious if a large cross will bring the unchurched to church? Maybe. I would rather spend the money on the community or send it to missions.
What do you think?
