iParking pews1 can make it easier to pray
By JOHN DART
(C) 1873, The Los Angeles Times
When the first drive-in worship services
began, they were thought to be a gim
micky addition to the drive-in craze of the
1850s. But in the 1970s — when main-line
Protestant denominations continue in a
membership tailspin — the drive-in
churches are beginning to look like a shiny
new model for church life.
They are gaining members. The
pacesetter has been the 6,350-member
Garden Grove (Calif.) Community
Church, which the Rev. Robert Schuller
began in 1955 by preaching at a drive-in
theater.
By 1963 he had built a combined walk-in,
drive-in church in which the same service
is visible from the pews and the autos. The
service (one of five conducted each Sun
day) is visible a week or two later in 40
cities on television as “The Hour of
Power.”
At least 18 other churches have begun
drive-in services on a year-round basis —
not only in the sunny regions of California
and Florida but also in places like Denver
and Michigan.
One of the most ambitious in California
will be the Lake Hills Community Church,
which began tins year as a spinoff from the
Garden Grove church. A 54-acre site is
being purchased for a walk-in, drive-in
church sanctuary, a retreat center and
chapel to be built around an existing 15
acre lake.
Now meeting in a school auditorium,
Lake HiDs already has some 560 members
and the benefit of an unprecedented
$300,000 new-church loan from the
Reformed Church in America.
OLDEST DENOMINATION
Practically all the drive-in churches are
affiliated with the RCA, a relatively small
denomination of Dutch heritage, which
claims the longest continuous church
existence in North America (since 1628).
Like many other denominations, the
Reformed Church has suffered mem
bership losses since the mid-60s. In the
four-year period to the end of 1972, the
active communicant membership declined
from 228,620 persons to 221,195.
But Reformed Churches in the Southern
California-Arizona region, which now
includes nine drive-in churches, have
climbed collectively up to 13,623 members
— a net gain of 2,080 persons in the same
period. (Other main-line Protestant
churches, meanwhile, have lost members
in Southern California and Arizona, just as
they have at the national level.)
“We have to attribute our growth here to
the drive-in churches,” said the Rev.
Harmon Wierenga, field director for RCA
churches in the western states.
Why mere churches of ether
denominations have not picked up the
concept is “baffling” to Wiereaga and
other denomination officials. “Other
denominational executives ask a lot of
questions, but they don’t seem to feel
that’s their bag,” he said.
The drive-in churches use the parking
“pews” primarily as a way to introduce
hesitant, but potential, churchgoers to
their style of worship and church ac
tivities.
The pastor of a walk-in, drive-in church
in Long Beach, Calif. — El Dorado Park
Community Church — said his
congregation has almost doubled to 1,200
since facilities were completed in 1970.
“We find the general procedure is that
they cjrive by, see the church, and say, ‘I
want to attend there sometime; it’s
beautiful,’ ” the Rev. William Miedema
said.
THE BIG STEP
“On some day like Easter or Mother’s
Day, they sit in the drive-in section,” he
continued. “After a couple of times, they
decide to sit inside for the worship service.
The fourth step, if they like what they see,
is to become active in the life of the church
by joining.”
The biggest problem, said Miedema, “is
to get people from the,cars into the church.
They are not really a part of the fellowship
when they’re out there.”
The Rev. Harold Leestma disagrees. “I
never felt anyone outside had to come
inside. To make a distinction would make
them second-class citizens,” said Leest
ma, Lake Hills pastor and for more than 10
years an associate pastor at the Garden
Grove church.
For some, the drive-ins simply make
churchgoing possible. These include
persons who are crippled, mentally
retarded, ill or merely uneasy about
religious services. People dressed
casually for a Sunday trip can go directly
from church to their planned activity
without going home to change. Campers
are not an unusual sight in the drive-in
section.
One minister tells of a city worker who is
sometimes on call on Sunday. Contacted
via radio while attending a service in his
car, he can either radio instructions or
respond to the call himself.
3 TO 1 INSIDE
The Garden Grove church — designed
by architect Richard Neutra — allows the
ministers on an elevated altar to be visible
both to thos£ inside and outside. Huge
sliding glass doors to the side of the altar
open at the start of the service, allowing
the ministers to alternate facing first one
audience, then the other. Attendance
averages about 75 per cent inside, 25 per
cent outside.
Other drive-in churches either schedule
separate worship services on their
property or conduct them at a drive-in
movie theater. At the theaters, the existing
sound system of speakers is used.
Churches with their own drive-in sec
tions — some paved, some grassy —
generally have speakers between parking
spaces or broadcast the service in a
limited range, picked up on car radios at
the left end of the dial. Motorists without •
car radios are lent transistor radios for the
service.
Portable heaters are kept on hand by a
Denver congregation that conducts 11 a.m.
Sunday services year-round at a drive-in
theater five blocks from its church (where
it holds an early service and Sunday
school). “We’ve gone through thPee
winters,” said the Rev. Paul Lupkes, “and
we’ve only had to cancel three services
because of weather.”
The Denver church’s membership has
increased only modestly from 150 to 200
persons since beginning its drive-in
ministry two and a half years ago, but
apparently it has been successful enough
to inspire inquiries from Baptist, Free
Covenant and Assembly of God
congregations in Coioardo.
Bid pastors and executives of the
Reformed Church in America emphasize
that the drive-in feature is not enough to
guarantee a thriving church. The par
ticularly successful drive-in churches
appear to have three things in common:
— A community wide approach, non
denominational on the surface at least.
— An emphasis on “personal
Christianity” and how-to-be-happy ser
mons.
— A promotional flair on the part of the
pastors.
Not long after newcomers get exposed to
the RCA drive-in churches, they learn that
it is the same denomination to which the
famous Dr. Norman Vincent Peale
belongs. Within a generally evangelical
Protestant presentation of the gospel, the
drive-in preachers have adopted their own
versions of Dr. Peale’s “power of positive
thinking.” In Schuller’s lexicon that
becomes “possibility thinking.”
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