Drive-In Devotion

As the choir sang Holy, Holy, Holy, the Rev. Robert H. Schuller mounted the pulpit of his new $3,000,000 church in Garden Grove, Calif., and pushed a button. Two 25-ft.-high sections of the glass wall before him separated slowly, leaving only open air between the preacher and nearly 1,500 worshipers in 500 cars parked below him. Schuller's nondenominational Protestant parish, as its newspaper advertisements state, is a "walkin, drive-in" church--one of more than 70 now operating across the nation.

Pew on Wheels. Most such churches begin by taking over a drive-in theater on Sunday morning. Minister, choir and organ perch atop the projection booth or a makeshift stage, and the sermon is piped into cars through window speakers. Among the most impressive of several new churches specially built for drive-in congregations are Schuller's Garden Grove Community Church (designed by Richard Neutra) and the glass-walled Trinity Reformed Church in Kent, Wash., which will accommodate up to 300 people in cars parked outside. Both Garden Grove and Trinity Reformed also serve worshipers seated in the nave.

Except in Florida and Southern California, drive-in churches generally function only in the summer or for Easter sunrise services. They particularly attract vacationers who, as one minister puts it, suffer from "normal protestantitis"--the feeling that summer is the time to take a holiday from church. Many worshipers are attracted by the lack of usual Sunday formality, show up in everything from bathing suits to pajamas. The church lots are invariably packed with cars carrying rooftop boats, surfboards, golf clubs and picnic hampers. But the convenience of drive-in services also attracts the sick and disabled, parents with small children who cannot be left home alone, celebrities trying to shun crowds, and many unchurched Christians who just like to meditate by themselves.

Honk for Service. Whether fancy or plain, the mechanics of most drive-in churches are similar. Ushers distribute printed hymns as the cars roll in, help plug in speakers, take car-to-car collections during the service or request worshipers to place donations in a bin on the way out. Some drive-ins also pass out car-to-car wafers and grape juice for Communion. At many drive-in churches, worshipers roll down their windows and sing hymns together, get out of their cars after services for coffee and doughnuts at the snack bar. Some pastors try to talk briefly with churchgoers as they roll out through the gates; the Rev. James Wallace Hamilton of Pasadena Community Church in St. Petersburg, Fla., even encourages his mobile congregation to greet visiting preachers with "a gentle, dignified horn toot."

Though some churchgoers are perturbed by the secular surroundings of many drive-in services, most of the ministers who have tried preaching to a congregation of cars generally like the idea. They do, however, concede that there are certain inevitable dangers. Half-jokingly, the Rev. John Muller of Bethel Reformed Church, a South Miami drive-in, worries that he will one day mount the pulpit and absentmindedly intone: "Will the autos of the congregation please rise?"

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