Theater churches offer nontraditional setting for worship
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By BOB REEVES / Lincoln Journal Star
If you drop by the Rococo Theatre on a Sunday morning you may think you’re at a rock concert.
The room is dark, lit mainly by lamps and candles at the tables, giving an aura of a nightclub. On the spotlighted stage is a band with keyboard, guitars and drums. Three singers deliver a high-energy song to a throbbing beat.
But when you listen to the lyrics or see them projected on the screen behind the stage, you know this isn’t a typical concert. “Make a joyful noise unto the Lord,” they sing.
It’s the morning worship service of RiverTree Community Church.
Since it began a year ago, the church has been worshipping at the downtown theater, which pastor Greg Loy says is a perfect venue for attracting people who would shy away from a more traditional church.
“We love the ambience,” he said. “It has a non-threatening feel. People don’t feel like they’re on center stage. It’s a people-friendly place.”
Some people, he said, sort of slip in and out of worship without calling attention to themselves. But if they want to get to know other church members, there’s plenty of opportunity around the Rococo’s big bar, where they can grab coffee and rolls and take them to a table to munch during the service.
The church began as a ministry of First Evangelical Free Church, which worships in a more suburban setting at 3300 S. 84th St.
A youth minister for 25 years, Loy said he felt the call to start a new church while he was attending a conference at Willow Creek Community Church, a Chicago-area mega-church that got its start in a movie theater. He was wondering how to bring up the subject to Evangelical Free’s pastor Mark Brunott, when out of the blue Brunott told him, “Greg, I think you’re being called to plant a new church in Lincoln.”
Loy and a small core team from E. Free looked for a site in south Lincoln, but it didn’t materialize. Eventually they decided to rent space at Rococo, a central location close to the university and downtown apartments, “right in the middle of the people we wanted to reach.”
The Rococo is a high-profile facility that attracts people who may just be curious to see what a church service in the beautiful old theater is like. “It’s a place maybe they’ve been before, but not for church,” Loy said.
“The church is really a neat outreach. It’s really welcoming and open to everybody,” said Susan Gauthier, a former member of Lincoln Berean Church who has been attending RiverTree since last fall.
Over the past year, average Sunday attendance has grown from about 100 at first to more than 170 this fall. People of all ages attend, but a high proportion of worshippers are under age 30.
“A lot of that is due to students,” said Joyce Schaben, who has been with the church since it began. “We don’t do much advertising. It’s mainly word-of-mouth.”
Another Lincoln church that also worships in a theater is SouthPointe Christian Church, which for three years has held Sunday services at SouthPointe Cinemas.
SouthPointe Christian plans to break ground in November for a building on four and a half acres near 27th Street and Pine Lake Road, just west of the Super Saver.
Using the movie theater has some disadvantages — like chewing gum on seat bottoms and sticky floors, Walls said. But it also creates a less “churchy” atmosphere, which has been good for the start-up church.
Some people have come who might have been turned off by a more formal church setting, he said. “It also helps people to understand that the church is not a building.”
Jody Luzum, who didn’t belong to any church before, said she decided to try SouthPointe after hearing a radio ad. “I thought it was kind of weird meeting in a movie theater. I thought maybe they’d give us popcorn, but they didn’t.”
Instead, she found a church where people were “not pushy,” and where she felt at home. “The chairs are comfortable, and you can have coffee while you’re listening to the sermon,” she said. She calls it “the karaoke church” because it has no hymn books, and song lyrics are projected on the big screen.
“One Sunday morning the marquee outside said ‘Sin City.’ That may have scared a few people away,” she said.
The church uses one movie theater for worship and two of the other five theaters for Sunday school. The church stores its sound equipment and other supplies in the building, so it’s easy to set up on Sunday morning, Walls said. The church averages 120 worshippers each Sunday. There is a church office at 2917 Pine Lake Road.
RiverTree Church has no plans to build, but is planning to add new programs, such as children’s and a youth ministry. “We feel we’re right where God wants us to be,” Schaben said.
A nursery is provided during worship at the Rococo, but older children sit at the tables with their parents during the service.
For several months, Loy had an office and tried to keep regular office hours, but hardly anyone came in, so he now “offices” out of downtown coffee shops where he is available for informal conversations with anyone — church members or otherwise. “I hang out wherever the coffee’s hot,” he said.
RiverTree takes its name from Jeremiah 17:7-8 in the Old Testament, which says “Blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord … he will be like a tree planted by the water that sends out its roots by the stream.”
The church shares the same conservative Christian beliefs as other Evangelical Free churches, but Loy said he tries to emphasize love and grace — which are the heart of Jesus’ message — rather than doctrine.
At a recent service, Loy — dressed in a black t-shirt and black chino pants — gave a conversational sermon as part of a series on “Making a Difference in Our World.”
“God wants us to be change agents, but we’ll only change the world so far as God has made a change in us,” he said. “If we’re getting tight in our relationship with God, then we will make an eternal impact.”
He played a short video featuring Michael, a recovering addict who did not wish to use his last name, living in a halfway house, who started coming to RiverTree Church. In the video Michael talked about the positive impact his faith has had on his own life and others. Using real-life examples like that helps demonstrate what God can do in anyone’s life, Loy said.
He frequently meets people who say they made a commitment to Christ while attending a worship service at RiverTree. “We believe that life transformation is a God thing,” but the church tries to create an atmosphere that will allow that to happen, he said.
Loy’s son, Aaron, a college student, leads the worship team most Sundays and Loy’s wife, Megan, is the female vocalist. Their older son, Jake, led worship last summer.
At the recent service, Aaron, dressed in t-shirt and cargo shorts, invited worshippers to leave their tables and come down front to pray and sing. “You have permission to roam free and worship however God leads you,” he said.
“Someone said, ‘Your church seems more like a halfway house between the church and the world,” Loy said. “That’s one of the best compliments we’ve got as a church.”
The SouthPointe congregation is looking forward to its new building, but many members want to be sure it keeps its laid-back atmosphere. “Some want us to have seats in the new church with cupholders” like the movie theater, Walls said.
A groundbreaking ceremony will be Nov. 6. The site and foundation will be prepared, then in the spring teams of volunteers with Vision Builders, a national mission of the Christian Church-Disciples of Christ, will come to Lincoln each week to do the actual construction. The congregation expects to spend $850,000 on its own building, but also will donate $25,000 to Vision Builders to help rebuild churches destroyed by Hurricane Katrina.
Lisa Gengenbach, who helped build a church in North Carolina through Vision Builders, agreed that so many volunteers being involved will emphasize the fact that the church is people, rather than a structure.
Before coming to SouthPointe, Gengenbach attended more traditional churches, but felt the movie theater church “was full of new possibilities.”
“Some churches get so bogged down with the building. I don’t see that happening with SouthPointe. This is a very spiritual church.”
Reach Bob Reeves at 473-7212 or at breeves@journalstar.com.
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