Rated R [for Religion]

I like recycling and multi-use buildings. One thing that has always impressed me about the town government here is that fact that the Town Hall, and now the Justice Center were recycled medical buildings. instead of building from the ground up they re purposed them.

Multi-use is also a great idea. The Market that recently opened is one such place. Being open as it is it can be used for almost any combination of items. Now into Smyrna we will have an odd teaming of movies and religion.

The New Vision Baptist Church in Murfreesboro is expanding to Smyrna, and instead of having a whole new campus, they are creating a temporary campus at the Malco theatre. The Smyrna AM reported on this last week. In an email to This is Smyrna, TN. Campus Pastor Blake Nichols said..

We really think this is going to be a neat experience for the Smyrna community. New Vision has spent lots of money with a consulting and equipping group out of California called “Church on Wheels” (www.churchonwheels.com ) to purchase sound and light equipment, children’s ministry equipment, signage etc to turn the theater into a church every Sunday morning.

They guarantee that we can go from theater to church in 45 minutes from the time we roll the trailer up to the front door. We get the equipment Oct 11 and are anxious to see if we can accomplish that.

The Smyrna campus starts Sunday October 18th at 10:00 and we have to be completely packed and out by noon for the first matinee.

As for the service:

Music will be live as well as stuff for the kids but the message will be a video of Pastor Brady Cooper in HD projected full screen through the theaters equipment. The first Sunday, worship will be led by Russ Lee the award winning lead singer of the contemporary Christian band New Song.

We’re excited about bringing a new experience to Smyrna and know this has the opportunity to really impact the community.

This is our first time to try this but multi-site churches and “video pastors” are a growing trend across the nation and there are currently about 1000 churches either experimenting with it or planning to in the next 5 years.

I remember when I lived in Kansas seeing that one of the theatres has reserved one of the screens for a video conference for a local corporation. I guess with modern technology and modern electronic communications more and more different forms of services will find new partnerships that work for both.