{"id":4428,"date":"2006-11-11T13:10:26","date_gmt":"2006-11-11T18:10:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost:8888\/2006\/11\/11\/because-pews-dont-have-drink-holders\/"},"modified":"2006-11-11T13:10:26","modified_gmt":"2006-11-11T18:10:26","slug":"because-pews-dont-have-drink-holders","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/2006\/11\/because-pews-dont-have-drink-holders\/","title":{"rendered":"Because pews don't have drink holders"},"content":{"rendered":"

CLEVELAND — The Rev. Dan Smith uses an extremely unorthodox way to preach the Christian gospels. He wants to attract young people turned off by conventional churches.<\/p>\n

NewsChannel5’s Ted Henry reported Smith will do almost anything to convince those turned off by religion that being spiritual can be cool. He wants to attract the unchurched.<\/p>\n

"I have some people who haven’t been to church in 10 to 15 years or forever, saying man that this is cool," Smith said.<\/p>\n

Another interesting element is where the church — Momentum Christian Church — is located.<\/p>\n

The congregation meets at the Cinemark movie theater on Canal Road.<\/p>\n

"A lot of time when you walk into a church it feels kind of solemn, but when you walk into a theater, it feels like something exciting is about to happen,” Smith said.<\/p>\n

Momentum Church is new to Cleveland and people are finding a wide array of activities for kids, teens and adults.<\/p>\n

"I am a younger person, I like a more upbeat type of church," one member said.<\/p>\n

Another member said, "We’ve been here ever since it started. It’s different. It’s not like being at church."<\/p>\n

…Some might consider this approach a bold church experiment because of everything — a movie house, video games, Hip Hop, comedy, plus the teachings of Christ. But Smith thinks it is his life’s passion to bring what he has to offer to both the unchurched and the disillusioned.
\n<\/a><\/p>\n

I wonder if they play trailers like "Jesus – Coming Soon! The Second Coming, the sequel we have all been waiting for, this times he’s here to judge."<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

CLEVELAND — The Rev. Dan Smith uses an extremely unorthodox way to preach the Christian gospels. He wants to attract young people turned off by conventional churches. NewsChannel5’s Ted Henry…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4428","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-humor"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4428","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4428"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4428\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4428"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4428"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4428"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}