Wednesday, Oct. 17, 2007
The theme of the sermon Sunday morning was ‘‘Invited,” and pastor Jumaine Jones was delivering a message with the help of the wide screen behind him on the importance of welcoming newcomers to his church on Ellsworth Drive.
His congregants, many dressed in jeans and sneakers and first-time visitors to the church, were scattered throughout the space inside a downtown Silver Spring movie theater, their offering cards in their cup holders.
‘‘We get new people every week,” said Dafnette Jones, Jumaine’s wife, after services Sunday at the Majestic.
The theater hosts a crowd even before its earliest matinee, and visitors to the church are welcomed by staff from The Bridge, a nondenominational Christian church for ‘‘imperfect people,” at the front door, the escalators and breakfast bar outside Theater 2.
The Joneses, who commute to Silver Spring each Sunday from Columbia, have been offering services at the theater during the last month. The theater may be a more unique venue for a church than most, but it is also a convenient location in the heart of a large population with parking and Metro nearby, Jumaine Jones said.
‘‘Everyone is familiar with where it is, and it shows that we’re really here to meet the community, and engage them,” he said last week of his church. ‘‘We want people to come as they are ... that’s how God takes us.”
Jumaine Jones’ sermon Sunday touched on the importance of adapting to changing assumptions about both religion and technologies, ideas he said were easy to explore in a church meeting out of a theater.
‘‘The language of our generation is video ... and we have to speak to them through video,” he said Sunday, while the images behind him — lyrics of the songs sung during worship, and passages from the Bible referenced during Jones’ sermon — changed throughout the service.
‘‘The fact that it is unconventional appealed to me,” said Renita Perkins of Upper Marlboro before the service.
The Majestic isn’t the first theater that has opened to church groups during off-hours, and The Bridge isn’t the first church that has operated out of the Silver Spring theater.
Journey’s Crossing, which has two services each Sunday at the Rio Theaters in Gaithersburg, was the first church to meet at the Majestic when its pastors wanted to expand its operations to the east county. The church, which has been at the Rio since 2001, sustained the second location for about a year and a half until 2005.
Currently operating only out of Gaithersburg, Journey’s Crossing has been weaving its space into its messages as part of its ‘‘At the Movies: Moving from Reel to Real” series, where the summer’s most popular films, like ‘‘The Simpsons Movie,” are used to initiate discussions on the subject matter for the day. The Gaithersburg church also works with the Starbucks outside the Rio to have fresh-brewed coffee for visitors to have in their cup holders during the service.
‘‘The theater makes some money, because they’re not showing movies at the time, and we can be in this very dynamic location,” said Pastor Darin Brown of Journey’s Crossing. ‘‘For us, it made more financial sense than buying a big piece of land, than to build a building. ... Those options weren’t financially feasible.”
Jumaine Jones said the church pays $650 per week to rent Theater 2 at the Majestic. The rental fee there ranges between $400 to $1,000, depending on the size, said David Kussner, general manager at the Majestic. Theater space is more often rented for business conventions or community meetings, although the trend for churches to seek alternative space is on the upswing, Kussner said.
‘‘More and more theaters have church groups renting an auditorium for those morning times, if just because of the space,” said Kussner, who has worked at several theaters in the area.
Brown said the only negative with holding services in a theater is the set-up required — the lighting and equipment needed to put on their high-tech services is put together around 7:30 each Sunday morning. Debbie Jones, Jumaine’s sister, said because the group has to be out of the theater by noon for the first round of shows, the services rarely go beyond about an hour.
‘‘This is where we wanted to be,” Debbie Jones said of Silver Spring. ‘‘It just worked out this way.”
