Sunday, October 26, 2003

By Cooper Munroe

Question: What do you get when you cross a handful of young, hip ministers with a movie theater? Answer: A church. But it's a church with a twist. The offering is collected in popcorn buckets; most of the worshippers eschew their Sunday best for jeans or cargo pants; and the live band, with its electric and acoustic guitars, drums and keyboard, "rocks" with Christian music.

Every Sunday at Carmike Cinemas at Cranberry Mall -- just a couple of hours before audiences arrive to see films such as "Kill Bill" and "Texas Chainsaw Massacre" -- the theater becomes home to the newly formed Discovery Christian Church, drawing an average of 225 people on each of the five Sundays it has met there.

Although the service has the basic elements of traditional worship, including music, communion and a sermon, Discovery Christian Church is not typical.

"We wanted to do a church the way we wanted to attend church," said Pastor Toney Salva. "There is no genius behind this other than the fact we wanted to have fun and have church in a way that makes sense to us."

Salva, 32, came to the Pittsburgh area from a similar church in Boston to start Discovery Christian Church in Cranberry. He has been working for the past year to get the church going, and it held its first service last month.

He describes Discovery Christian Church as interdenominational, or for anyone "who just wants to be Christian." He said the church is a part of an association of similar Christian churches around the country, some of which are helping fund Discovery's startup costs and salaries for its five staff members.

Salva, who lives in Cranberry, plans for the church to be self-sufficient in four years and said Discovery's long-range goal is to build three churches in the Pittsburgh area. The church staff recently set up an office in Cranberry.

For Salva, one of the primary goals is to attract people in their 20s and 30s. So far, singles make up most of the adults who attend Discovery Christian Church, with young families a close second.

Last Sunday, all ages were milling around the theater's lobby, from very young children to retirees.

Among the oldest people there were Ray and Joyce Zielinski, of Ambridge. He is 50 and she is 47. The couple first came to the church because of a promotional flier they received in the mail, and now they are the church's official greeters, handing out programs and setting up the communion trays.

"The minute I walked in, I knew," Joyce Zielinski said. "The sermon is interesting, it really hits home, and it is a different format. We were looking for that."

For Salva, who, at 32 is the oldest of Discovery's five staff members, having a range of ages is vital to the well-being of the church.

"We are trying to reach the post-modern generation," said Salva, whose wife, Stacie, runs the children and family programming for the church. "But it is also important that we be multigenerational. Many of us did not grow up with grandparents around, or mothers or fathers present. We can learn a lot from people of different generations."

Connecting with the congregation outside of the Sunday service is also important to Discovery's staff. The church offers family outings, discussion groups and sporting events.

Community involvement pastor Bryan Gratton, of Cranberry, organizes, among other things, athletic teams for the church.

"It is awesome. I love what I do. I can play soccer, volleyball and basketball as part of my job," Gratton, 25, said with a laugh. "Most people our age have a feeling there is something bigger out there and we help them connect."

Gratton, originally from the Pittsburgh area, came to the church from Tampa, Fla., where he was a youth minister for a Christian church. His wife, Kristen, worked for a law firm there and is now in charge of administration and development for Discovery Christian Church.

Caleb Cragle, 24, of Ellwood City, said he went to church only when he was forced to go. But at Discovery, he said, he feels differently.

"I love it here. It feels like it is directed to my age. The sermon makes you think. It just seems like it is more involved with people."

Because services are held in a movie theater where a large screen is already in place, multimedia technology plays a significant part in getting across the church's message.

During the service, the screen is used to display song lyrics, an outline of the pastor's message and lines from Scripture. Last week, Salva showed a video made of the youngsters in the church's children's program telling Salva what they wanted to do when they grew up. He used the video to open his message last week titled, "Determining Your Direction."

"Everyone in here is a '10' at something at life, and we need to discover what that is and get busy doing what that is," Salva said in his sermon.

Salva recently used a clip from the film "Dumb and Dumber" during a service to make a point about dealing with difficult people.

"I think the technology we use is almost a nonfactor here because people of our generation are so used to all these things. If you use archaic ways to communicate a message, you shortchange the message. Jesus used examples in his culture for his teachings, and I think Jesus would use technology if He was on Earth today," Salva said.

While technology is important to the format of the church, Salva said the church is careful to make sure the message stays "real."

"This generation is very skeptical of anything that is overly performance-oriented. We walk a fine line between quality music and technology and not wanting it to be so perfect that people are not able to see humanness in it," Salva said.

Stephanie Cabot, 25, of Ellwood City, said she had difficulty relating to more traditional churches.

"You kind of fall asleep in sermons. But here they are not just reading to you," she said.

"You can really identify with the messages," added her sister, Amanda, 21.

The Web site for the church, www.discoverytogether.com, has a cutting-edge design and offers, among other things, a message board that includes posts on "where singles meet" and "questions about God" as well as announcements and a link to recordings of past church services.

The church program, handed out to the congregation at each service, includes not only the basic agenda for the morning but announcements -- about a junior-senior high bowl-a-rama, for instance -- and a perforated flap that asks visitors to check ways they would like to "connect" with the church, such as helping to set up the equipment each Sunday morning for the service or getting involved with the band.

The program also includes a "Did U Know?" section that last Sunday revealed such snippets of information as 90 people attended the church's fall festival and that the church's worship and student outreach pastor, Ethan Harrington, once had a mohawk.

Harrington is also the lead singer in the church band.

"Music is one of my central passions in life, and I believe musical talent is a gift from God," said Harrington, 30, of Richland, a graduate of the University of Pittsburgh. "Music seems to have the capacity to reach the core of our soul or being in a way words and other things can't do."

His wife, Debbie, is a piano teacher and plays keyboard in the church band.

"There is a freshness to the vision of this church," Ethan Harrington said. "It is not your usual church-in-a-box. There is risk and adventure."

Cooper Munroe is a freelance writer.

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