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

Abstract

Forward Christian Community (Forward) is an evangelical church that incorporates Christendom and Jewish traditions into its worship and repurposes an unconventional/commercial space—a former movie theater. Forward started as subsidiary ministry of a larger evangelical church community before becoming its own independent church community separated from its mother church. In this article, I argue that Forward has developed a new vision of how church can take place through its founding members’ shared past and experiences at their mother church—their cultural memory. The conventional–unconventional form of church they developed is manifested through a new form of church space.