Popcorn in the pews

Movie theaters are the new churches. Some congregations plan to stay.

Ruth Moon | posted 1/14/2009 08:56AM

The distinction between secular and sacred space continues to blur as a small but growing number of churches meet in movie theaters and consider eschewing traditional church buildings altogether.

Currently 180 churches are renting movie theater space under one-year contracts with National CineMedia, which manages rentals in 1,400 theaters nationwide. That’s an increase from three churches six years ago.

“Movie-theater screens are postmodern stained glass. We’re using moving pictures to tell the gospel to a post-literate culture,” said Mark Batterson, lead pastor of National Community Church, which meets in Washington, D.C., theaters and hosts a conference for theater churches. “There are ways of doing church that no one has thought of yet. We have to live with the tension of being biblically true and culturally relevant.”

While most of the congregations eventually want to own a building, experts suggest about 10 percent plan on long-term portability — and the number is growing.

“In the beginning, a lot of people viewed portability as a means to an end,” said Kendra Malloy, marketing director for Portable Church Industries. “Now people see portability as a way to go and be part of the community.”

The majority of Malloy’s church clients rent schools, but about 15 percent rent movie theaters for worship space.

Although a LifeWay Research survey last February suggested that people who don’t go to church may prefer traditional, cathedral-style buildings to modern sanctuaries, the hope is that theater-style buildings will draw those who might not feel comfortable entering a traditional church.

Willow Creek Community Church in South Barrington, Illinois, began in a movie theater in 1975 with 125 attendees. Today the church has 20,000 attend each weekend.

The Willow Creek Theater fit the church’s criteria: it was a low-cost, easily accessible facility with no religious symbols, giving it a neutral appeal, said Scott Pederson, who directs local missions at Willow Creek. Yet he said the theater presented unique problems, including makeshift arrangements such as Sunday school “rooms” partitioned out with burlap in the lobby and a nursery in the women’s restroom.

“I don’t know how many other churches are starting out in theaters, but I feel their pain,” Pederson said. “It’s a tremendous facility, but it does take quite a bit of work to make it go because … there’s a movie that’s going to show just as soon as the church service is done.”

Meanwhile, some churches are requesting buildings that feel like black-box theaters. Others are buying theaters to renovate, said Dennis Ehrman, president of Church Building Consultants. Existing theaters can work well because they are zoned for group use and built so the congregation can easily see the stage.

Greg Snider, project developer for the Aspen Group, an Indiana-based church building company, said he sees two developing trends. Out of the 40 churches under contract with Aspen, 10 are interested in theater-style auditoriums and seating, while four want smaller, chapel-style second buildings for extension services instead of expanding existing auditoriums.

“Everybody is looking for the next wave. We went from cathedrals to churches with pews and vaulted ceilings to the Willow Creek model — the theater seats and big screens and big production — and for me, the biggest movement right now is the intimacy issue,” said Snider. “How do we do ‘big’ small? If we have to get 500 people in a space, how do we get it to not feel like 500 people?”

Original story here.

After the bailout, government-owned churches?

But law profs say church-state problems are unlikely.
Ruth Moon

October 1, 2008

If any bailout legislation passes, the government will likely hold mortgages purchased from banks and attempt to sell them as soon as their value climbs high enough.

So what happens if the government buys out a bank on the verge of bankruptcy and obtains church mortgages? Would the government be entangled with religion? Would such an arrangement amount to a violation of the First Amendment’s bar against establishing religion?

The problem would be in the gap between when the government gets the mortgage and when it is sold, said University of Toledo law professor emeritus Howard Friedman, who raised the question in a blog post last week.

“Having a government-owned church is probably in theory an Establishment Clause problem,” Friedman said. “It gets a little more dicey if the church defaulted on the mortgage while the government was holding it — do you give them special consideration? If you don’t want to foreclose on them, do you foreclose on one church or not foreclose on another?”

Pre-foreclosure agonies aside, once the government foreclosed, there would not be much of an issue, said Pepperdine University professor of law Mark Scarberry. The Secretary of the Treasury would likely make an effort not to foreclose on churches, he said. But if it did foreclose, it would sell the property to a private owner or evict the defaulting church.

In any case, the government would not end up with long-term ownership of a functioning church. In a worst-case scenario, the congregation would have to move.

“That’s already a possibility whenever a church gets a mortgage,” Scarberry said. “People have always thought [that] as a matter of public relations it’s very difficult for a bank to foreclose on a church.”

But it does happen. The Deal magazine reported in August that a surprising number of churches are behind in mortgage payments, leading to the possibility of foreclosure.

Church-state scholars agree, though, that the legislation should not create a problem for churches.

“The government is not funding the construction of churches or land purchases, it’s looking at a market for real estate debt,” said Robert Tuttle, professor of law at George Washington University. “Whether it’s accepting payments, foreclosing, or negotiating, there’s no constitutional problem if it’s treating [all properties] the same.”

Depending on what form the bailout legislation finally takes, there’s a slight chance there would be similar Establishment Clause problems with student loans taken to attend religious colleges, Friedman said, but he doesn’t anticipate a problem.

“This is all awfully theoretical,” Friedman said. “Other than people praying for [the bailout] working, I don’t see much of any connection there with most of these mortgage loans.”

Churches begin cleanup after Ike

Some congregations worry that storm fatigue could cause exodus.
Ruth Moon

September 23, 2008

For one church in Seabrook, Texas — just north of Galveston, on the bay — the damage from Hurricane Ike is a blessing in disguise.

Tony McCollum, pastor of the 900-member Seabrook United Methodist Church, said the September 13 hurricane’s damage will benefit the church, at least in one way. The church will use the insurance money to get a head start on a long-planned new sanctuary. McCollum hopes the insurance money will cover the $3 million first phase of the project. The church’s current buildings — the highest of which was flooded with three feet of water — will all be torn down.

“We’ve been working on this move for 12 years,” said McCollum. “Now we’re going to be able to let go and say, you know what, at this point we have no option.”

This Sunday, the congregation had an outdoor worship service at the site of the new building. McCollum is not sure what the congregation will do until the new building is built, but is considering a modular building, sharing space with another church, or meeting in storefront property.

But as McCollum and other church leaders begin cleaning up the damage from Hurricane Ike, they are concerned about the storm’s less visible effects.

After hurricanes Rita and Katrina in 2005, McCollum said, Seabrook United Methodist lost about 20 families who were tired of frequently preparing for storms and moved. The pastor is now bracing for another wave of departures.

“We had a lot of folks who just got weary battling the hurricane,” he said. “A consultant called it the Rita effect: we had a lot of members move away from the community because they just got tired of battling nature.”

Another problem churches are preparing to face is less giving, as families use their money to rebuild their homes and lives. The budget at Seabrook United Methodist will shrink, McCollum said, but he’s not yet sure where or how.

On Galveston Island, 25 miles south of Seabrook, some churches may be shutting down altogether because of the hurricane.

Sharon Burns, pastor of two Lutheran churches on Galveston, said one of her churches (Saint Paul’s) will likely shut down permanently because of Ike, and services at the other (Zion Lutheran) won’t resume for two or three months. The island itself won’t be open for residents to move back for at least a month, said Sara Martin, administrative assistant to Galveston County judge James D. Yarbrough.

The 27-by-3-mile island is home to more than 100 churches, Burns said.

Burns has not been to the island since the hurricane hit, but a member of Zion Lutheran drove by the building and reported it had three feet of flooding. Burns hasn’t heard an update on the other church and is still trying to contact the members.

Galveston is no stranger to hurricanes and floods; the largest and most famous hit in 1900 and killed an estimated 8,000 people. In spite of disasters, though, most residents don’t want to leave.

“Their history goes back — parents and grandparents and the stories of what they put up with,” Burns said. “We have people who can talk about people who knew people in the 1900 flood. I’m not from Texas, so I’m going, ‘I’d move!’ but that’s not the attitude on the island. It’s their home.”

Further inland, Houston Baptist University is also facing setbacks from the hurricane. A campus-wide power outage forced a break from classes, and flooding destroyed several administrative buildings in the center of campus, said Hunter Baker, special assistant to HBU’s president.

Damage is estimated at $10 million to $12 million, Baker said, where it has climbed from the initial estimate of $5 million. Classroom space wasn’t damaged so officials and classes resumed Monday as power returned. Administrators had been working out of the president’s home and are now scattered across the campus.

“Our hope is this will be more of a problem for the administration than the students or professors,” Baker said.

Churches in Houston are also recovering from power outages and flooding while struggling to provide help to congregation and community members.

In an odd role reversal from Hurricane Katrina relief programs in 2005, staff members at First Presbyterian Church in Houston have been getting concerned text messages and phone calls from New Orleans residents who had been evacuated to Houston in the wake of Katrina.

“The whole thing has been surreal,” said Mary Floye Federer, director of global missions at First Presbyterian Church in Houston. The church building wasn’t damaged, but power has been out and staff members are scattered across the city.

“Not realizing until I look in the newspaper — that’s finally started back — and seeing horrific pictures in Bolivar, in Galveston, and even in the third ward and fifth ward where people are getting MREs, you’re like, ‘Oh my gosh, that’s us — that’s home.”