"This place helps you keep your faith up -- lets you know you're not the only Christian around," said Tiffany Stillwell, 16, who sat on a bench with her boyfriend amid all the activity. "My old church treated us like kids and talked to us like adults."
Indeed, gone are long fire-and-brimstone services. Wednesdays now tend to be more casual, social and personal -- a time to study the Bible, but also interact with like-minded worshipers who are often outnumbered on Sundays by what the devout church community calls the drop-in "seekers."
"Wednesdays are really designed for the believers," said John N. Vaughan, founder of Church Growth Today, which tracks church trends and growth. "At some of these mega-churches, they don't consider the thousands who come on Sunday the primary members. Wednesdays attract the core lifeblood of the church."
Scholars trace the midweek services and activities virtually back to the settlers, when some of the era's earliest and most renowned evangelists urged lay people to assemble for prayer during the week, and become involved in the functioning of the churches.
"What the church has always provided is an extended family," said David Edwin Harrell Jr., a history professor at Auburn University in Alabama. "What's new is that many of the churches today are influenced by television and the new media culture. Consequently, their midweek services are more upbeat and better planned."
Bartel of Church on the Move describes Wednesday as "the church family," saying, "The Wednesday people are here all the time, and they don't want to feel rushed." He says the extra time lets him go into the "meat and potatoes" of the study of the Lord, not just song worship and the tightly timed and produced Sunday service.
Bartel -- like most other church officials nationwide -- is working on ways to facilitate church as community -- a concept in which the Wednesday service plays a vital role. In the next few months, Church on the Move, which has 12,000 members, will renovate its lobby areas, putting in a cafe and conservation areas.
"We want to make our halls like Barnes & Noble -- feel at home, get here early, stay late . . . where we can talk about life issues, we can get to know each other," he said.
Other churches are taking similar steps. Cascade United Methodist Church in Atlanta started Wednesday Night Live a few years ago, creating a coffeehouse environment for worship. At Bethlehem Lutheran Church in Aberdeen, S.D., 400 to 500 people attend the church's weekly Wednesday night supper and prayer.
One Baptist church in Louisville found a way to accommodate members who are fans of the University of Louisville Cardinals, who often play on Wednesday nights: After services, games are shown on a big screen. In Baton Rouge, La., the relatively new Healing Place Church found such interest in Wednesday nights that it runs two services -- one dubbed "late nite" and geared to 20- and 30-year-olds.
At Saddleback, Warren made the strategic decision to offer one Wednesday service a month, and encourages congregants to join weekly home groups in their neighborhoods. The church helps the home meetings' organizers by offering video guides, themes for the meetings ("40 Days of Purpose" was a recent one), an online database of members and "coaches" to help people get to the gatherings.
Members say the Wednesday service provides an opportunity -- and a respite -- for them to evaluate how their lives, families and careers are going amid the bustle of the busy week.
"You have to ask yourself, 'Am I satisfied with where my life is headed right now?' " Bartel asked the 1,500 who had come to a recent Wednesday service, as he put together an oversize puzzle on the altar.
After the service, Mike Whitlock called the evening "a great way to get a little shove to get you through the week." A sales representative in his twenties, he drives 30 miles each way to Church on the Move. "I still have a lot of puzzles to figure out in my life. It's worth the drive."
Staff writer Alan Cooperman and research editor Lucy Shackelford contributed to this report from Washington.
