I just finished a paper for class on the importance of church architecture. In the process of researching and writing, I came across this, which I think is great:

Probably the best illustration of this important intersection between the structure and the community that builds and dwells within it is the rhyme that many children have ‘enacted’ with their hands: ‘Here is the church, here is the steeple, open the doors and see all the people.’ For the structure cannot be empty; it has meaning and life only because of the people who...hold the whole thing together. A church, after all, is its membership, the community---not its symbolic container. Without anyone to use or to understand it, the meaning disappears. The presence is what makes a space sacred. (123-124).
-- Robin M. Jensen, The Substance of Things Seen: Art, Faith, and the Christian Community, 123-124.