Starbucks, theater seating and spirituality Blackstone cinema hosts church in off hours
On a recent sunny Sunday morning before 9:30 a.m.,
patrons amble into the Blackstone Valley 14 Cinema de Lux in Millbury, grab a cup of Starbucks coffee at the concession stand and find a seat in Theater 5 to wait for the action to begin. But they aren’t there for an early matinee of "Pirates of the Caribbean." They are attending the launch of the new Lifesong Church, which plans to hold Sunday services at the cinema over the next year.
While a movie theater may seem a strange place for religious worship, Lifesong is tapping into a national trend in which churches and theaters have found a mutually beneficial communion. Theaters are finding that renting out facilities to churches is a good way to boost profitability during off-peak hours. And churches see meeting in movie theaters as both cost-effective and a way to modernize their services and reach out to a young generation that has no tolerance for wooden pews and somniferous sermons.
Or, as Lifesong Pastor David Payne puts it, "We’re losing a whole generation because the experience we give them is an irrelevant one." Holding services at the cinema, complete with rock band and on-screen images and lyrics, he says, is a way to counter that by taking advantage of today’s technology tools. And, at $2,870 per month, Payne says, his church – a nondenominational spin-off from the MetroWest Worship Center in Ashland – is saving more than twice that amount by not maintaining a traditional church building.
Payne says he got the idea of launching the church at the Blackstone Cinema after reading about a Washington, DC-based church that took to the theater there some years ago and after going to see "King Kong" at the theater.
Wanda Whitson, spokesman for National Amusements Inc., which owns the cinema, says this is the first church rental her company has done in New England, but it does rent to churches elsewhere. She declined to supply details on where or on the revenue generated by that niche. However, Whitson did say renting to churches poses "a great opportunity to use our theaters during down business time," adding that her company is open to other creative uses as well.
Other cinema companies have cultivated the church rental market for years. According to "In Focus," a magazine published by the Washington, DC-based National Association of Theater Owners, the National CineMedia, a marketing venture operated by Regal, AMA and Cinemark chains, hosts 90 to 100 congregations nationwide. CineMedia has a separate division to sublease cinemas for alternative uses.
Jim Kozak, editor and chief of "In Focus," says renting to churches is not a new idea and doesn’t represent a significant portion of revenues in the industry but is a way to supplement profits, particularly since religious services don’t require cinemas to pay for a film. "In Focus" notes that the trend may have had its roots in Chicago some 30 years ago. Churches at cinemas really began to take hold in 2002, it reports. Kozak had no specifics on how the trend has played in New England.
Micky Baca can be reached at mbaca@wbjournal.com
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