Like an Easter Sunrise, the completion of Our Savior Lutheran Church, in Houston, Texas by April 9th,June 25th, 2000 announces the dawn of Lutheran revival in the Americas. Rising 160 feet in the air, this new structure will have no peer on this continent.

By the grace of God, one LCMS congregation has committed 6 ½ million dollars of church architecture to express Lutheran theology instead, of empty, contemporary, meaninglessness. As mundane cookie cutter mega-church buildings struggle to help people discover themselves, Our Savior is about discovering the Gospel and the Sacraments of Jesus Christ in sight and sound.

For the donation of your choice, you could receive a historic letter in return from Pastor White, thanking you for helping build the landmark example of Lutheran architecture and visualization of Lutheran Theology. Send to your check made payable to:

Our Savior Lutheran Building Fund
5000 West Tidwell
Houston, TX 77091-4633

Our Savior practices the liturgical worship taught by Luther and voter assembly polity as taught by Walther.

There is nothing more temporary than contemporary church architecture. If you have seen one mega-church you have seen them all. They include stage/chancel, padded seats, spotlights, big sound systems, band pit, curtains, blank walls, glass, big screens and nothing to look at. Their empty, barren, cold, clinical, stark, sterile environments tell you exactly what they have to say, nothing.

The Texas landscape may be dotted with LCEF funded contemporary mega-churches, but in this "Church Growth" wilderness there is a revolution taking place. When you drive into Our Savior's forty-six acres, roads connect the new buildings with names like Luther, Walther, Preus, Behnken, etc. But instead of a multimillion dollar LCEF funded administration building like one finds at Concordia, San Antonio, the pastoral offices are in a double mobile home. Our Savior has kept theits overhead to a bare minimum. They build churches and not egos.

Pastor White has spent a number of years studying "Lutheran architecture". He is now one of the foremost authorities on the subject in North America.

In the second and third generations after the Reformation, the Lutherans stopped copying the Catholic/Reformed style of church architecture and invented a new style. Parts of this Lutheran style were only copied in a limited number of churches during the first 50 years of the LCMS.

White contracted the famed craftsmen of Demetz in Ortisei, Italy to tell the story of the Gospel and the Sacraments in exquisite paintings, stained glass, carvings, and sculptures of wood and bronze. Our Savior is spending nearly a million dollars so people can see something interesting when they walk into their church.

Demetz has declared its artwork in Our Savior to be its foremost achievement. Within ten years, it will be impossible to duplicate this art work simply because the craftsmen will no longer be available.

The wood of the altar, pulpit, and its many carvings are sculpted out of linden wood and then tinted. The twice-life size crucifix was re-carved four times until it met White's specifications. There is a 7 by 14 foot cast bronze frieze in two-foot bas-relief with approximately a dozen life size figures from the Reformation as you walk into the Church.

There will be a larger than life size bronze statue of Luther as you walk in the atrium. There are carvings of angels, Michael Slaying the Dragon, John the Baptist, and carvings of angels with children as you enter the church.

Yes, Our Savior will also have a real pipe organ, a massive, state of the art instrument, to accompany, of all things, congregational singing from real Lutheran hymn books.

No Lutheran structure in the Americas will match the artistic and aesthetic excellence of Our Savior Lutheran Church, not the chapels at either Seminary nor at Valparaiso.

The entire church is in the shape of an octagon, taking much of its form from the Lutheran Church in Dresden that was bombed in World War II. The octagon structure copies the shape of the baptismal font. It will seat approximately 1,200 people. About 450 will sit on the main floor and there are two wrap around balconies, one above the other each seating about 350 people. The goal is to keep people close to the pulpit.

The church will be about 100 feet high in the interior. Why? For one thing, to move the people closer to the pulpit that comes out about 25 feet in the air over the altar. There is no lectern. The entire structure is designed to be center on the preaching of the Word. This is a stark contrast to the long Catholic naves copied by most architects in this country, with no concern for what the people heard.

On top of the hundred foot high church is a 60 foot tower with an iron walkway around it. While still under construction, I followed pastor White up the spiral stairway, above the church and walked out at about 140 feet in the air to see a view of downtown Houston, 15 miles away. The Church is built on a hill, which makes the view even more dramatic. The walkway can accommodate approximately 20 people.

Instead of building an auditorium like Willow Creek, Our Savior built a Lutheran cathedral. My description here is too brief and inadequate. White promises that a narrated videotape of the building will be made available after the building is dedicated.

I predict it will become the foremost "Lutheran" attraction in North America. Just a study of the building, is a study of the Reformation. There is no LCEF money in this building. They are using architecture as evangelism. Visitors, architects, students, and non-Lutherans will come to see, study and worship.

This writer has a doctor's level degree in art. In the early 1970's I earned a MFA, the three-year variety, served three years on the Faculty of Indiana State University as an Assistant Professor of Art, worked in advertising and then worked as the PR Director at Fort Wayne. Prior to Indiana State, I taught five years at Lutheran High Schools. My show record included 26 awards; mostly first place, including a number of pieces in museum collections. My point is, I am in a position to give an expert opinion of Our Savior, as much as can be said prior to its completion.

The look, feel, enormity, originality, interpretation and visual impact of this structure is unlike anything I've experienced in Lutheranism. More than a church, Our Savior is a landmark, a monument for the ages. It is not a converted auto dealership to which the LCEF contributed 8 million to turn into the Prince of Peace Lutheran Church in Carrolton, Texas.

To put it bluntly, I keep asking myself, how and why isWe are deeply impressed with this uncharacteristic expression of aesthetic brilliance in Our Savior LutheranChurch possible from 20th Century German Lutherans? For a loan of 14 million dollars from LCEF, Concordia, San Antonio worships in a cold contemporary artlesswarehouse. That is what I expected from German Lutherans!

All you have to do is compare Italian Baroque, English Romanticism and French Impressionism with German Expressionism and you know why Germans excel at institutional architecture.Church. I am simply astonished with Our Savior. It is a miracle of good taste. They understand the word, beauty.

The irony is that in a denomination bent on its own self extinction, led by a COP of cultural barbarians, a hundred years from now, Our Savior will be its greatest landmark to Lutheran Theology because they resisted the LCMS with all their soul. To God be the glory.

When we read that a PLI Leader had to be stopped by a 75-year-old woman from putting the wrecking ball to one of the five most outstanding church buildings in the LCMS, the LCMS clergy have met my full expectations as aesthetic under achievers. In other words, leadership is nothing to look at and a terrible bore. PLI-Leader has no concept of "building loyalty" or who might even want to bother taking care of these mega-mistakes in the future. I dare say, it never crossed his German mind.

I know Rev. Laurence White to be an outstanding speaker and theologian, but with the construction of Our Savior, I can only sing a Te Deum. The God who raised Wittenberg above Rome continues to enlighten His people with His Word. He confounds the wise and raises up those of low degree.