Sadly, this line of thinking may be outdated. My musician's heart took flight when the carpet was torn from St. Charles Borromeo Church, Bloomington's own mini-gothic at Third and High streets, which produced an acoustic reminiscent of some glorious European spaces. My heart broke again when someone decided it didn't look enough like a living room, and they flapped the place with carpet again. First Baptist-United Church of Christ, a little further down the road, has the right idea. The interior is covered with wood, which resonates like a fine violin when the right voices and instruments come together.
Many churches install electronics to compensate for the acoustic they strip from a building.
In some cases, there is too much resonance for the delivery of the spoken word, and small speakers are placed for clarification. Instruments such as these would be heard in a cathedral, a coliseum, or a baseball stadium. For expensive music-making, we make larger halls where we can fit an orchestra or an opera and a larger audience to help fund it. All of this calls into question what music is and what it does. Music is many things to many people, particularly in this day and age.