Movie-Theater Churches Catering to Kids

For the growing number of churches meeting in movie theaters, one of the biggest challenges is what to do with the kids.

A large movie auditorium filled with seats and stairs and dominated by a giant screen is a big departure from the tidy classrooms in schools and buildings adjacent to traditional churches.

"In a theater, people say, 'How in the world can you do that?' " said Earl Leatherland, family minister at the Chapel at Elmwood, a movie-theater church in Buffalo, N.Y.

The topic was one of the highlights on the agenda of a conference of about 80 ministers who met this week in Silver Spring. It was sponsored by National CineMedia, a movie theater chain that houses about 200 churches, including about a dozen in the Washington area.

Most theater churches are evangelical and geared toward people in their 20s and 30s who are not drawn to conventional houses of worship.

But as those congregations age and theater churches begin to appeal to families with young children, a growing number of the churches are using children's ministries and a high-tech environment to attract those families.

"If you ask kids, 'Hey, do you want to go to church at a movie theater?' they're more apt to say, 'Yeah,' '' said Barry Brown, director of worship solutions for CineMedia.

For younger children, many theater churches block off the area between the front row of seats and the movie screen with colorful partitions to create play areas.

Dafnette Jones, co-founder of The Bridge, a year-old church that meets in the Regal Majestic 20 in Silver Spring, said volunteers created a mural of a downtown scene that runs underneath the screen. She said children meet in age groups throughout the auditorium.

Outside and in the hallways, ministers say they hide racy movie posters behind Christian murals and large plants.

David Stine, minister of DC Metro Church, has about 75 kids who attend each Sunday at an Alexandria theater. For children over 5, he said, a commercial Christian curriculum is projected on the big screen.

"They love it," Stine said. "They're begging their parents to come to church."