Rejoice!Build a house of worship. Gather a people. Keep the faith.

Design

Draw it tile by tile, then watch it go up

Walls, doors, and windows; a sanctuary or a prayer hall, a social hall, a kitchen, classrooms, a beit midrash, a wudu room, monks' quarters, a sachkhand where the Guru Granth Sahib rests at night, and the rest of twenty-six kinds of room, each with a job and its own needs. Stone, plaster, brick, and panelling inside and out, fifty-one materials and finishes, twelve building styles, a balcony or a women's gallery upstairs and a basement below, on a lot with its own zoning in one of fourteen American regions.

Raise a steeple, a dome, or a minaret; a stupa or a pagoda tower; a shikhara, a vimana, or a gilded dome; a gopuram, a torii, or a paifang at the gate; a temple roof with upturned eaves, in glazed tile or cypress bark. Turn the whole lot to face the qibla. Then contractors, approvals, and weeks of work, paid as it goes.

The week and the year

Every faith keeps its own time

Sunday, the Sabbath, Shabbat, or Jumu'ah. Shabbat runs from candle-lighting on Friday to nightfall on Saturday; the five daily prayers move with the sun where you've built, through the year; a Zen center sits at dawn and dusk. A gurdwara's diwan runs from morning into the afternoon, with langar after. A Hindu temple, a Shinto shrine, or a Chinese temple keeps open hours, and families and visitors come through them one by one. The big gatherings play out at a minute a second, and the daily ones pass quickly unless you choose to watch.

Fifty-three calendars set the year, by the moon and the sun: the Christian year in its colours, the Hebrew calendar's High Holy Days and festivals, Ramadan and the Eids by the Islamic months, Diwali and Navaratri by Hindu lunar days reckoned where you build, Vaisakhi and the gurpurabs, Paryushana, Lunar New Year and the Ghost Festival, Setsubun and the solar terms by the sun, and Obon, Vesak, and Tết. Weddings keep off the Sabbath, and in some Hindu and Jain traditions out of chaturmas and Paryushana; for Jews and most Muslims, a burial comes within a day or two.

Money and upkeep

Faith is free. Heating isn't.

Each faith gives in its own way: the plate and pledges, a synagogue's dues and its High Holy Day seats, zakat in Ramadan passed straight on to those in need, dana at a temple, tithes sent up to the wider body. Families book pujas, blessings, and readings for a fee, at the temple or at home, when a priest is free; visitors buy amulets, and families renew their lamps each year; a family sponsors the week's langar; honours go to the highest bidder in a Jain center's boli. Against them, salaries, utilities, insurance, the mortgage (or Islamic financing where interest is forbidden), and a kosher, halal, or vegetarian kitchen. Set the budget, draw on the endowment, run a building campaign.

Everything wears: boilers fail in January, roofs leak, the old bus breaks down on the way to worship. Maintain it, or pay more later.

The challenge

Hard choices, and a congregation to keep

A brown stain spreads over the back pews after a week of rain. A wealthy member offers a gift, if it's spent on new carpet. Two volunteers fall out over the coffee rota. Some want the call to prayer given from the roof. The astronomers say Eid is on Tuesday; the moon-sighting committee says Wednesday. The temple's board and its abbot can't agree what the building fund is for. The priest's visa is running out. The losing slate takes the gurdwara's election to court. The neighbours complain of the smoke from the furnace where paper offerings are burnt. A hundred dilemmas, projects that need approving, and conflict that can split a congregation.

• Revitalize a dying parish with a handful of faithful and a failing building.
• Restore a fire-damaged historic church, listed, stone by stone, while the parish worships in its hall.
• Plant in a new suburb, from a rented storefront to a building of your own.
• Build a cathedral across generations.
• Turn a bought church into a mosque, with the mortgage still owing and the rows turned to the qibla.
• Make one congregation of two synagogues that merged under one roof, grudges and all.
• Rebuild a dharma center's trust after its teacher's fall.

Seventeen scenarios, from a storefront mosque and a temple in a house to a country church sharing its pastor, most of them playable in more than one tradition. Or play the sandbox with any of the eighty traditions, with milestones and grants to reach for.