From Silver Screen to Sacred Home: Transforming Places of Entertainment Into Spaces of Worship

Introduction

Many contemporary church communities build, use, or repurpose unique and occasionally controversial spaces for their worship. Post, Molendijk, and Kroesen (2011) address controversial worship spaces utilized by contemporary Christian faiths by focusing on the changing landscape of rituals. They find traditional/conventional church spaces grow empty, while multireligious urban ritual spaces, such as places of pilgrimage and war cemeteries, gain popularity, especially in Europe. In North America, however, this notion sometimes appears to be reversed: Instead of church buildings closing and becoming cultural heritage sites, commercial buildings, such as movie theaters, car dealerships, and shopping malls, are being used as or transformed into worship places for church communities. Both the European and North American contexts show that the old categories and dichotomies are shifting. Post et al. (2011) call this shift an “on-going process of re-articulation.”

Amid this re-articulation, Forward Christian Community (Forward), an evangelical church community that worships in a former movie theater in a Canadian prairie city, is a unique case. While it is common for evangelical churches to use commercial spaces for worship, Forward’s members transform(ed) their space to be more reminiscent of the conventional church buildings of the Christendom tradition (the church traditions that developed between the times of Constantine and the Reformation).

As a result of my ethnographic work with Forward, I propose an analytical framework explaining how a church community’s members’ cultural memory is instrumental in transforming a commercial space such as a movie theater (a “profane” space with a specific purpose, appearance, and function) into a worship space for a church community (a “sacred” space with a specific purpose, appearance, and function). ¹

Background

In 2012, for a pilot project, I examined three evangelical church communities that meet in movie theaters in western Canada: Downtown Church (DC), its branch, Southtown Church (SC), and Forward. ² I participated in their services and conducted focus group interviews (Wohlrab-Sahr & Przyborski, 2010) with the lead pastors and founding members of those communities. I was interested in their choice to meet in movie theaters and what it means for them to feel close to God in a place of entertainment—in a place that seemingly does not allow for the creation of a devotional mood (Bollnow, 1963/2011).

By talking to the lead pastors and founding members of these churches, I discovered that for them the word “church” refers to a group of people and not to a building. The lead pastor of DC/SC explained the church community’s choice of worshipping in cinemas by referring to the New Testament:

Corinthians says you are the temple, the holy spirit and that word you—I was always taught as a kid it’s just me as an individual, but it’s all of you—when you guys gather together as a community, you are a temple. And so, we allow that to really define the environments that we meet in.

During my focus group interview it became obvious that the lead pastor and founding members of DC/SC view their worship space as a secondary necessity. By arguing that church communities can worship in any place, they intentionally activate a spatial concept that harkens back to Early Christianity.

Harold Turner (1979) finds that the New Testament deliberately does not mention particular holy sites as places of worship for Christians. According to him, Early Christianity regarded God’s presence as universal and was wary of the notion that worshippers must approach God only in specifically sacred spaces. Turner (1979) argues that, with Christianity, a new idea of a temple developed: Christ in community—a concept that allowed worshippers to gather and pray in convenient and safe common places. According to him, Early Christians primarily used private houses to gather for worship. These houses did not contain many religious symbols, keeping believers focused on worship, particularly communal worship (Turner, 1979). According to Turner (1979), the first church buildings designated as temples of Christian worship were erected by Constantine, the Roman Emperor who legalized Christianity in 380 A.D. and subsequently decreed it the state religion.

Paul Post (2012), however, revisits the house church of Dura Europos—a prototype for the spatial concept of Early Christianity. By providing an in-depth encounter of the Dura church, Post challenges Turner’s (1979) argument that Early Christians gathered for worship in private houses that hardly contained religious symbols, were homey, and informal. Post (2012, p. 243) instead finds that

[t]he word “house” does not fit here, nor does the term domus ecclesiae, which evokes too much the idea of a “just a roof above some heads’ or ‘in one house or another.” Rather, it is a cultic space like a temple, an extremely sacral place.

Despite the fact that those informal and homey house churches may not actually have existed in Early Christianity, I argue that some of Turner’s (1979) findings are nonetheless relevant: especially the fact that the New Testament deliberately does not mention particular holy sites as places of worship for Christians, accompanied by Christianity’s new form of temple (Christ in community).

As the above mentioned quote reveals, for DC/SC’s lead pastor the community is the temple. Furthermore, this idea reflects/informs the environment of DC/SC’s meeting spaces. Accordingly, DC and SC meet in informal and profane spaces that scarcely contain any religious symbols. The former has made no renovations to the theater, while the latter meets in theaters of a currently operating multiplex. By meeting in commercial buildings and by using or transforming them into worship places minimally adorned with religious accoutrements, evangelical church communities’ spaces differ substantially from the cathedral-like spaces characteristic for those church communities that belong to the Christendom traditions.

Like DC/SC, Forward is an evangelical church, and I assumed its space also would be minimally adorned with religious accoutrements, and its leadership would view space as a functional, secondary necessity. I expected Forward’s space to still be a movie theater, which its members nonetheless use in order to worship. When I entered Forward’s church space for the first time, I was surprised. Forward’s church space contains numerous religious artifacts: crosses in various forms, stained glass, paintings that depict biblical narratives, kneelers (prayer benches), and a separated prayer room within the sanctuary. Due to the community’s renovation/decoration processes, it did not feel like entering a movie theater; it felt like entering a modern-looking conventional church building.

Data and Method

Since September 2013, I have attended Forward’s Sunday services as an ethnographer to observe how the members interact with their unconventional space and what role it plays during their services. I learned that Forward’s members have previously worshipped in a number of spaces. They began as a young adult ministry of Prairie City Alliance Church (PCAC), and subsequently rented space from two more churches in their city before settling in to the former Prairie Landing Movie Theatre.

In addition to participant observation (Tjora, 2006), I interviewed three long-term members of Forward’s congregation. My interview participants had been members of PCAC before they decided to become part of the young adult ministry that would splinter off to become its own independent church community. Each of my three interview participants witnessed Forward’s moving process: from temporary worship spaces to the church space that they now call home.

My interviews were separated into two parts: I started with mobile interviews (Brown & Durrheim, 2009), which included a walking tour through Forward’s church space, followed by semistructured interviews for which I had prepared an interview guide (Kvale, 2007). I used grounded theory’s analysis method (Strauss & Corbin, 1998; Wohlrab-Sahr & Przyborski, 2010) to code and analyze the data I had collected. During this process, three main themes emerged: balancing the sacred and the profane, struggling between the importance and unimportance of physical church space, and building our own tradition. My three themes build on each other and explain how Forward’s members chose to transform an unconventional/commercial location into a more conventional church space due to Forward’s founding members’ shared experiences with their mother church. While I do not intend to write as unconventionally as some ethnographers, my assumptions, feelings, and memories still will be a part of my narrative. I feel that my unconventional–conventional style of writing reflects the unconventionality–conventionality of both Forward’s church space and congregation members’ vision of how a church community can be.

Balancing the Sacred and the Profane

In the Prairie Landing strip mall, next to a pub, a marquee is the only evidence that a movie theater once operated in this space. Inside, the box office has become a small kitchen, and where persons once waited in line, several couches sit alongside a bookshelf. A few paintings, with no obvious religious connection, hang alongside wooden and metal crosses. As I descend the large, steep stairs, I see a mural depicting an Old Testament narrative.

At the bottom of the stairs is the large main room, with a central counter. Once a concession stand, it still hosts a popcorn machine. Framed prayers hang alongside advertisements for social justice organizations. Several smaller renovated rooms are off of the main one. A youth room hosts a video game console and an air hockey table. The nursery room is next to a studio. Forward rents out the studio for various fitness courses. A single theater remains. Forward rents it out for birthday parties or business presentations. The rooms set aside for kids’ church feature couches, biblical paintings, and art supplies. Another room hosts a large, colorful play structure with little trace of religious influence; it is particularly popular for birthday party rental. Forward has created a space adorned with sacred elements that, in most rooms, maintains the casual warmth of a profane space. The sanctuary, however, is a space specifically set aside for religious worship.

Once three separate cinemas, the sanctuary was the first room to be renovated. The floor slants forward, and several rows of seating face downward to a stage area, where the worship band performs and the lead pastor delivers sermons. Above the stage is a stained glass cross, framed on either side by two stained glass pictures. The pictures depict various churches—some of which are Forward’s former worship spaces—and other landmarks in its city. Film reel runs through two of the four pictures, referring to the history of Forward’s new church space. The front of the stage is adorned with electric candles and artificial flowers, and to the left of the stage is a large baptismal tank. The walls of the sanctuary feature several paintings, one of which depicts three crosses at sunrise. Congregation members produced this painting by putting their colored hands onto the canvas. In the back left corner, dividers section off a small space for private prayer. This space includes a large wooden cross, tables with candles, and two kneelers.

While noncongregation members are able to rent other rooms of Forward’s church space, the sanctuary is not available for birthday parties, movie nights, or company presentations. It only is available for music recitals. The fact that outsiders are able to rent the community’s sanctuary for music recitals as well as other rooms for parties, movie nights, and company presentations is an indicator that the congregation encourages worldly activities in its church space.

My time with the members of the congregation led me to sense that the rental of space for worldly activities is not detrimental to the sacredness of Forward’s church space—an observation that complicates Durkheim’s (1912/2008) finding that religion is a practice that needs to mark off and maintain distance between the sacred and the profane. It is reasonable to define parties, movie nights, and company presentations as profane activities since they are performed by outsiders and share little similarity with Forward’s Sunday service activities. Due to my observation that the congregation’s church space allows both—the creation of the sacred and the maintenance of the profane—I argue that the sacred and the profane are able to interact with each other in Forward’s church space.

Durkheim (1912/2008), however, states that space is divided and differentiated. He further argues that “spatial representation consists essentially in a primary co-ordination of the data of sensuous experience. But this co-ordination would be impossible if the parts of space were qualitatively equivalent and if they were really interchangeable” (p. 11). Depending on the activity and the rooms in which this activity takes place, the sacred and the profane interchangeably predominate in Forward’s church space—the opposed groups are in a dynamic balance—in a way that is not possible in a strict reading of Durkheim.

While Forward’s space encourages worldly activities as well as spiritual activities in the same building, and though the sanctuary is the most obviously sacred area, the entire space is sacred for the members of the congregation. Forward’s members did not only transform physically parts of the former movie theater into a sacred space, they also changed the aura of the entire space through a spiritual transformation. Birgit, a member of Forward since their inception, explains this transformation during our mobile interview:

The Sunday that we kind of dedicated the space, . . . the pastor had asked numerous members of the congregation to pray. He gave us each an area of the church, and as a part of that service that morning we prayed for every area of the church, just dedicating it to God’s glory and God’s use. And so, in the different areas you’ll find a framed prayer. And, they were written by different members of the congregation.

As the quote suggests, Forward’s members’ spiritual transformation of their church space is a sacred element. According to Durkheim (1912/2008), sacred elements are not only religious artifacts but also rites or religious ceremonies that help to develop sacredness and form the basis for Durkheim’s definition of religion (Riley, 2005).

The spiritual transformation is an activity not everybody would have been able to perform (Durkheim, 1912/2008). Only members of the congregation were able to perform this dedication act. Furthermore, each member of the congregation participated in this act in a nonhierarchical way. The framed prayers on the wall of each room function as reminder for both members of the congregation and outsiders: This building now is a church; it is a space that has boundaries. Pornography, horror movies, and alcohol consumption are some of the activities forbidden in Forward’s space.

While members of the congregation understand the sacredness of their space, outsiders may not acknowledge those framed prayers and may not understand what the space means to the congregation. The presence of the profane makes Forward’s space inviting to outsiders. Forward’s spiritual transformation of the physical church space, however, functions as a religious rite reclaiming a profane space and turning it into a sacred space. The way in which Forward reclaimed a commercial space for God is untypical for evangelical church communities. Most evangelical church communities view their church spaces as a secondary necessity and do not see the need to provide such a spiritual transformation of their worship spaces (if they have a particular one). Forward’s attitude toward its church space not only makes its space more misinterpretable than does a conventional church building, it also makes the community’s identification with evangelical Christianity more misinterpretable.

Another indicator of Forward’s spiritual and physical transformation of the space is the separated prayer room in the sanctuary, which includes two kneelers, as well as Forward’s pastor’s encouragement that congregation members include the kneelers in their prayer practices. The decoration of their space through artistic and religious symbols, and especially the separated prayer area that includes kneelers, are also untypical elements for evangelical churches. Margit, who is a congregation member of Forward since its beginning and has been a part of the evangelical church tradition since she was a teenager, addresses the particularity of the kneelers during our interview and describes them as an element that is “not very typical in an evangelical church. Sometimes evangelicals have tried so hard to cast off conventional church practices that we kinda threw the baby out with the bathwater.”

In this reflection, Margit addresses the difference between Forward and other evangelical churches. While other evangelical churches also meet in unconventional spaces, they do not transform them into facilities that are reminiscent of conventional churches—spaces that create a devotional mood. Those evangelical church communities most likely do not include kneelers into their worship or have sanctuaries that are specifically set aside for the community to worship. For example, DC and SC did not dedicate their spaces—they neither physically nor spiritually transformed them. The members of those church communities do not struggle with the importance and unimportance of having one’s own physical church space in the same way as do Forward’s members.

Struggling Between the Importance and Unimportance of Physical Church Space

The fact that Forward’s members have spiritually transformed the former movie theater into a sacred space through a dedication act, while also maintaining (and further creating) profane characteristics, proves that the space itself is important to them. This importance sets them apart from other evangelical church communities and is a reflection of the congregation members’ cultural memory.

After Forward had left PCAC, the community rented spaces from two other churches. Margit describes this period in our interview:

We did move in and out of rented spaces for a couple of years. . . . And we had to do the kind of thing where you bring in musical instruments. . . . All the stuff for the kids, we had to bring in. . . . And you still make it work. So it’s just more freeing to have a place. It’s like living in your own house instead of a hotel room.

Margit addresses both the importance and the unimportance of having a church space. She describes how it was exhausting to not have a space, yet the congregation members still made church possible—church community exists beyond church space. Her comparison at the end of the quote, however, shows the importance of having a permanent physical church space—church space allows security, flexibility, freedom, and the feeling of home. All of my interview participants describe the former movie theater as their church family’s house or home.

For evangelical churches like Forward, worship is possible in any given space because members believe that God is universal. I, however, argue that a significant difference exists between worship in any given space and worship in a space viewed as a special kind of home. Van der Leeuw argues that the house of an individual is “in its origin a sanctified area” (Bollnow, 1963/2011, p. 134). He considers both houses and temples as sacred spaces. Bollnow (1963/2011, p. 138) elaborates on that argument by describing the process of building a house as an activity that is in its roots “world-creating and world-sustaining, which is only possible with the use of sanctified rituals.” Margit describes how the space became Forward’s home:

It’s like moving into a house for a family, you know? If, say, people who had lived there before you, had a very different life than you, you move in and you make it your house. And it’s your life and the way you do things and there might be traces of them and the old paint or whatever, you know, until you change it and make it yours. But we moved into a house, you know? As a church, we moved into a new house and we’ve made it our house by living in it. So there is some things that happened in actual physical transformation, a physical change from what it was.

The process Margit describes is similar to the house-building rituals Bollnow (1963/2011) describes as world-creating and world-sustaining . Margit also describes a sort of cleansing ritual, reminiscent of Hurdley’s (2006, p. 718) finding that “the house and the individual interact in an ongoing construction of meaning. Homes are also a setting for the enactment of self, where the “otherness of previous owners and potential visitors must be managed—even exorcized.” By actively transforming their church space through spiritual dedication and physical renovation, and by calling their church space a home, Forward’s members indicate that the church space is a space they create and a space which, in turn, sustains them.

Bollnow (1963/2011) further argues that the main characteristic of a home is its homeyness: its ability to create feelings of comfort, security, and ease. While Bollnow (1963/2011) describes that homes are in their roots sacred, he also argues that church spaces, buildings that were erected as designated temples, are in their roots not homey, since they are “intended to put us in a devotional mood” (p. 142). I argue that Forward’s attempt to balance the sacred and the profane makes both possible: to develop a devotional mood and to make their space a home. While I agree with Bollnow that conventional church buildings scarcely allow the development of the warmth of homeyness, I find that Forward’s church space is homey.

For Bollnow (1963/2011, p. 144), one indicator of homeyness is that “the furniture in the room must also show that it has been lovingly chosen and cared for.” He describes that large bare spaces appear unfriendly and uninviting. Seating possibilities where persons are able to stretch out are also important in order to develop a comfortable atmosphere. Forward’s space displays a carefully chosen interior. The walls are not bare but decorated with colorful paintings—most of which were produced by congregation members. Seating possibilities such as chairs and couches encourage casual socializing. The size of the building is small compared with other churches, further creating opportunities for close conversation. Due to renovation and decoration processes, the former movie theater became Forward’s sacred home—a space that allows a balance of homeyness and devotional mood. The development of a sacred home further separates Forward’s physical church space from the worship spaces of other evangelical churches.

In Bollnow’s (1963/2011) definition, homeyness also is a way of remembering and commemorating history. Homes show individuals’ pasts and thus provide them with a feeling of security and stability. Much of Forward’s decoration objects commemorate the Christian past in general. While some of them are a part of the Christendom traditions (kneelers, crosses), some are indicators of an evangelical background (baptismal tank). Forward’s church space also shows decoration objects that are unique to the congregation’s own past. While Forward’s stained glass cross is a Christian artifact, it was created by congregation members and is framed by four more stained glass pictures that commemorate Forward’s particular history. The four stained glass pictures depict Forward’s mother church, the meeting spaces the congregation used in the past, and other landmarks of its city. Furthermore, the film reel that runs through the pictures indicates Forward’s new worship space—the former movie theater. The four stained glass pictures illustrate Forward’s journey from being a ministry to becoming its own independent church community as well as Forward’s connection to its city.

The handprint painting that depicts three crosses at sunrise (according to my interview participants, this painting illustrates the Resurrection) is an object that functions both as a reminder of the biblical past as well as a celebration—inscrutable to strangers—of Forward’s own past. All my interview participants talk about this picture. It is particularly important to them because its production was a communal and liturgical activity. All of them were a part of the creation of that picture. It was one of their most memorable services because it was a positive rite that connected them as a congregation.

Many of Forward’s decoration objects such as the four stained glass pictures, the handprint painting, and the framed prayers commemorate Forward’s past. Additionally, they capture members’ memories of the collective activities they experienced together as a community. Those memories are able to stay alive because Forward has a church space that allows members to display those objects. It is another indicator of how important it is to have one’s own permanent physical church space.

The tension between the importance and unimportance of having a physical church space, however, remains. All of my interview participants explain that a church building should not define the church community. Their decoration objects and how they renovated the space, however, express the community’s identity and help to define who they are. According to my interview participants, more important than the building itself are the worship activities and the ability of a church community to exist beyond church walls—a tradition most evangelical churches have adopted. Margit describes the difference between evangelical churches and the Christendom traditions:

It’s the activity that you pursue and not the space itself that makes it a holy experience. So, we could have church anywhere. It’s not dependent on the space the same way, that say, the Catholic Church. You can only have some kinds of services in a dedicated holy space. We are different than that. So it’s not that much different for us to be in a space that didn’t used to be a church.

Forward has proven that, like many evangelical churches, it is able to have church in any place. The difference between Forward and other evangelical churches is that Forward incorporates aspects of Christendom’s spatial traditions into the evangelical spiritual tradition. This attempt automatically leads Forward’s members to experience a tension between the importance and unimportance of space. While Christendom traditions embrace conventional/cathedral-like church spaces adorned with religious symbols, evangelicalism has separated from those notions. Forward, an evangelical church that adopts elements from both traditions, thus needs to put a different emphasis on its space. Forward’s members keep in mind that space is not defining and that church can take place everywhere, but they also recognize the value of religious symbols and communal creation of a sacred church home. The tension between the importance and unimportance of physical church space is a necessary concomitant that both requires and enables Forward’s members to build their own tradition.

Building Our Own Tradition

Due to their shared past at PCAC, early Forward’s members developed a cultural memory. When my interview participants reflect on Forward’s beginning as subsidiary ministry, they all share the same opinion: Forward had a different vision than PCAC. Margit describes in our interview significant differences between Forward and PCAC: Instead of focusing on growing membership, Forward’s members’ goals are to focus on spirituality and to be open to persons outside their church community. Birgit mentions the larger size of PCAC contradicting persons’ desires to worship in a smaller church community. According to her, PCAC had adopted a megachurch ³ mentality that she describes as tiring. The collective experience with PCAC ⁴ —including the disenchantment with their desire to grow larger—forms an important aspect of Forward’s founding members’ cultural memory. I argue that this cultural memory provides one explanation of why Forward chose to repurpose a movie theater and why they transform(ed) the space in such an unconventional–conventional way. By doing so, members of Forward reconstruct(ed) how church can take place, how a church space can look, and how it can be used.

According to Assmann (2013), cultural memory is not the same as individual memory; instead it develops through communication and language within a context of socialization. Cultural memory

ensures the members of a given society (group) have feelings of community, unity, and connections based on a common past. Its goal is the transfer of selected content and interpretation of the past so that members of a given society can create common memory and common identity on its basis. (Karkowska, 2013, p. 370)

Cultural memory is a living memory that is based on recognition and belonging, and it depends on certain objects that carry that memory with them.

According to Assmann (2013)

[cultural memory] involves a process of forgetting, moments of rupture and rebirth. So in order to survive, cultural memory depends on two different mechanisms: canonisation or, in other words, the selection of what must be taught to the younger generations; and the archive, which enables us to retrieve memories.

Forward’s cultural memory is manifested in certain decoration objects within the community’s building. One example is the four stained glass pictures featuring Forward’s former worship spaces and telling the narrative of its journey as a church community. It shows that the development of the congregation was and still is a process. It, however, is important for recent members who have not been a part of the beginning of Forward also to understand this process and be a part of further developments.

Newer members may not know that the desire for an intimate congregation that practices more active worship is a part of Forward’s early beginning. Newer members also may not know that Forward’s founding members developed this desire due to their experiences at PCAC. It becomes clear that newer members do not necessarily need to know all aspects of Forward’s past. They, however, need to make sense of the new form of church that this community has developed. The lead pastor’s sermons are an important part, supporting their sense-making process. Regularly, he introduces recent members to different aspects of Forward’s past and vision—a socialization through canonization. Furthermore, he actively includes the kneelers and the separate prayer space into his sermon, and he also has mentioned the desire to change the first row of chairs into a row of pews. This desire is particularly symbolic of Forward’s development of a vision that mixes evangelical and Christendom traditions.

One of the services that demonstrates Forward’s hybridity was when the lead pastor performed an infant baptism—an act that is different from most evangelical baptismal practices. Before Forward’s lead pastor baptized the infant, he explained that infant baptism is an act that belongs to more conventional church traditions. According to him, most evangelicals do not baptize infants but dedicate them, and when they are “old enough to make the choice for their self,” they will be emergent baptized, which includes wading into the baptismal tank. For the lead pastor, baptizing an infant was a way of respecting the wishes of the infant’s parents and celebrating “the Christian traditions beyond our little niche.”

While the lead pastor not only respects and activates Christian traditions beyond the community’s “little niche” as an evangelical church community, he also activates Jewish traditions, which are collective memories of Christian history. I participated in a service where the lead pastor and the congregation members celebrated Rosh Hashana, the Jewish New Year tradition. In addition, the lead pastor regularly mentions Jewish traditions in his sermons and explains Hebrew words, sometimes comparing them with the Greek of the New Testament. Forward’s church space, however, provides little evidence that the members of the community also have adopted aspects of Jewish traditions. Only the mural that, according to my interview participants, depicts an Old Testament narrative and a copy of the Old Testament in its original language (Hebrew) indicate Forward’s connection to the Hebrew roots in its church space.

It becomes clear that Forward’s physical church space, how the congregation has decorated the former movie theater, and the lead pastor’s sermons, allow both the preservation and development of the congregation’s cultural memory. Decorative artifacts and sermons both educate new members of the congregation’s general past as Christians, their particular past as an evangelical ministry, and their unique experiences of recent years. Forward’s lead pastor often mentions the handprint painting and explains to newer members its communal creation process; in his sermons, he canonizes the archive of the congregation’s history.

Another important aspect of Forward’s vision—being a church that is a part of its city’s community instead of separate from it—is manifested not through Forward’s members’ renovation of their space but through the choice of their space. For Birgit, this vision is a difference between Forward and other evangelical churches. Birgit explains how the former movie theater reflects the mind-set of Forward:

We just wanted some place to go and worship and be a community. Be Christ in our community rather than to expect the community to come to church. And, I think this space in a way fit the mind-set of the people that were a part of [Forward] at that time. We were looking for something different, as far as being a church family, being a church in the community. We wanted to be different than the majority of the evangelical churches that were, that are around, are in [our city] and in the area around. We didn’t want to be a megachurch. We didn’t want to be a big church. We wanted to be a community of believers that worship together but out in our community. And some of this space just sort of fit that.

The former movie theater not only limits Forward’s capacity automatically—preventing the community from growing as large as PCAC—it also is a part of an already existing community. The fact that the movie theater is located in a strip mall next to the city’s main bus terminal makes it visible; it makes it a part of persons’ daily lives. The building itself and its location—being in the middle of the community instead of on the outskirts of town—fits Forward’s members’ vision of “being Christ in our community.” Accordingly, at the end of each service, a member will say, “Go and be who Jesus wants you to be,” imploring the congregation to live sacredly beyond church walls.

As I have explained above, Forward’s church space is open for the community to use. It provides space for dancing/yoga/Pilates lessons, children’s birthday celebrations, and business presentations. The homeyness of the church space manifests the congregation’s vision of welcoming outsiders as well as members of the congregation. The space also is a living archive of Forward’s history. With each renovation, members commemorate their cultural memory, transmit their vision to newer members, and communicate with the larger community of which they are a part.

Conclusion

Forward’s new form of church manifested in a new form of church space emerges not only from a shared experience within a mother church but also coincides with generational changes outside the church. During our interview, Birgit mentions that Forward started as a “college and career group” of PCAC, meaning a younger generation was involved in founding Forward. Furthermore, during the focus group interview, the lead pastor mentioned generational differences as a reason for founding Forward and as a reason for becoming its own church community:

We also felt like, at least I felt like, there was kind of that niche in [our city] that people that weren’t interested in going to church and those were postmodern thinkers, they were ageing Gen-Xers, they were younger Gen-Ys, they were people that weren’t attracted to church but were really attracted to social justice causes, to doing good in the community and that kinda thing. And, I felt like there wasn’t any church in [our city] that met that specific group of people and so it wasn’t just based on a desire to be on our own, it was based on a desire to try something, to do something different.

Similarly, Gibbs and Bolger (2005), explain that Western culture has changed from modernity to postmodernity and that churches are necessarily part of this cultural shift, leading church communities to develop new forms of churches that are significantly different from previous forms. Gibbs and Bolger further argue that churches must develop different forms and approaches if they want to remain a significant part of Western culture. They state that the Baby Boomer generation was responsible for removing symbols, rituals, and images from the churches. The evangelicals of this generation erected suburban church buildings that are functional rather than devotional. Gibbs and Bolger refer here to the megachurch mentality: the vision of serving middle-class families in huge buildings minimally adorned with religious accoutrements. Generations X and Y are not satisfied with the linear, word-based, and abstract services usually provided by megachurches, and rather seek a more intimate approach to spirituality (Gibbs & Bolger, 2005).

Gibbs and Bolger have identified, collected, and analyzed data on new forms of Christian faiths called emerging churches. It has never been my intention to analyze whether Forward is an emerging church according to Gibbs and Bolger’s (2005) definition. My ethnographic work with Forward, however, has revealed some similarities, such as identifying with the life of Jesus, transforming the secular realm, living highly communal lives, welcoming the stranger, serving with generosity, and taking part in spiritual activities. Nonetheless, the literature on emerging churches does not give central importance to space, while I have been particularly interested in analyzing how Forward’s identity is expressed through its church space, toward building a theoretical framework that seeks to understand and explain the role that church spaces play in the identity production of church communities in contemporary Western culture. ⁵

Forward’s particular identity is expressed in its physical church space through decorative objects, the way the community renovate(d) the building, and the choice of location. Forward’s identity has been significantly influenced by the cultural memory developed in the generational splintering from their mother church and amid the “ongoing process of re-articulation” that marks contemporary Western culture. Forward’s unconventional–conventional vision of how church can take place is manifested in their unconventional–conventional use of physical church space.