Theater Churches

A few Sundays ago I worshiped with the church I serve where we gather every Sunday, the Showplace 16 movie theater. Following the service I hopped on a plane to Atlanta and I arrived just in time to attend a worship service at Passion City Church, which meets in a trendy downtown theater. The next few days I was in meetings that were held at a church building that had been converted from an old movie theater. This weekend we're taking some time away and are deciding between two churches to check out, both of which meet in, you guessed it...movie theaters!

This is a growing phenomenon among churches in the past few years. One of the largest reasons is the economy has made it difficult for churches to purchase land and begin building projects. Yet these churches in forsaking a traditional building are reaching segments of people that would never darken the door of a church. While meeting in theaters has its challenges (the weekly conversion of a theater into a sanctuary, the comfortable seats that could make it that much easier for a snooze during the sermon, or the words "Inglorious Basterds" flashing across the marquee as one walks into worship), I absolutely love how it is helping people rethink what it means to be the church.

I've often posed the question of people, "if your church building burned down would the church still exist?" If one even has to think about that question for a moment there is an issue. For the first 300 years of its existence the church did not have its own public places of worship. I love the exchange between Jesus and the Samaritan woman in John 4 about the right place to worship. Jesus redirected the conversation by expressing that it wasn't about the right place or building, rather it was about worshiping in spirit and in truth.

What saddens me in so many churches today is the time, energy, meetings, and money that is tied up in our buildings and not our churches. Could it be possible that church buildings actually get in the way of us being the church? When Christendom began we built magnificent cathedrals shaped like a cross and in more recent decades we've lost our creativity and have settled for giant sterile auditoriums with the aim of not offending any seekers. God has been present and active in these structures to be sure, but somewhere along the way the church forgot that sacred space existed wherever Christ was present.

Really it isn't so much about the theater, rather its about a fresh opportunity to blur the lines between sacred and secular, to bear the image of God in the public square, to redeem space that fuels the billion-dollar hollywood industry, to depend on homes and coffee shops for church to be experienced throughout the week. Conventional wisdom suggests that churches will remain in theaters until they are ready to begin a building campaign. However in a recent CNN study 67 percent of theater churches considered the movie theater to be a permanent facility.

"The church is no more a building than people are a bunch of two-by-fours." - Don Everts